Top 100 Irish People Quotes
#1. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking glass.
James Joyce
#2. World War One is an important part of Ireland's multi-layered history during which tens of thousands Irish people lost their lives.
Martin McGuinness
#3. In the spirit of the Irish people, Osama bin Laden, you can kiss my royal Irish ass!
Mike Moran
#4. Islam - a religion horribly misrepresented by terrorists, which is like the IRA saying they represented Irish people. Islam is a BEAUTIFUL religion. would make you cry it's so beautiful ... and gentle.
Sinead O'Connor
#5. She later said: "If the Irish people vote in favour of gay marriage then I'll vote for gay marriage in the Oireachtas in order to recognise that position, but at the moment that is not recognised by the Constitution."
Lucinda Creighton
#6. A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano.
Fiona Shaw
#7. The Irish turned in on themselves and bid up their own land prices in the most extraordinary ways. The Irish people stepped in and guaranteed the banks, and committed to repay sums they can't afford to repay, and essentially committed themselves to generations of suffering.
Michael Lewis
#9. But more than anything else, for the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, it was always a lot of resistance to U2. And that's why we came to America.
Bono
#10. Irish people give big hellos and very little goodbyes. Unless they're female, and then they spend five hours talking in the doorway to the person that's leaving their house.
Dylan Moran
#11. Forgiveness is the most important thing. We all have to forgive what was done to us - the Irish people have to forgive. The African people. The Jewish people. We all have to forgive and understand the only way to stop the cycle of hate and abuse is not to allow yourself to get caught in it.
Sinead O'Connor
#12. You ask people what their ethnicity is, and a lot of Scots-Irish people either don't know or if they know it they just don't acknowledge it. It's not something they really identify with. They're just plain old Americans, plain vanilla. I don't think they are a self-conscious voting bloc.
John Shelton Reed
#13. [These]were the legitimate acts of self-defense which had been forced upon the Irish people by English aggression... We did not initiate the war, nor were we allowed to choose the battleground.
Michael Collins
#14. Politics is the chloroform of the Irish people, or rather the hashish.
Oliver St. John
#15. I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true.
Anne Enright
#16. The Irish people didn't get on that well with each other either. They hated the Catholics, was the main issue, as I see. You can't blame them for that. If I understand correctly, Catholics do not believe in contraception. So, you know, sex is not relaxing.
Jaclyn Moriarty
#17. President Obama told the Irish people that America will always stand by them, to which Israel laughed.
Jay Leno
#18. It's an amazingly consistent thing with Irish people. We will talk to strangers at parties for hours. It's what we were bred to do I think. And the Jewish people were bred to write the stuff that we say.
Greg Fitzsimmons
#19. I am delighted with the strong vote I have received. My message of positive leadership, patriotism and commitment clearly was resonating with tens of thousands of ordinary Irish people.
Michael D. Higgins
#20. As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.
Dylan Moran
#21. Irish people have a trick of over-statement, at which one ceases to wince as one grows older.
Katharine Tynan
#22. If you stand back and look at it in a global sense you'll find this [Irish people in music] was happening everywhere. Which is just another example of a wave of artistic endeavour that changes. It reaches a certain point, learn from what its done and move on. We seemed to have picked up on that.
John Kinsella
#23. They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.
Bobby Sands
#24. Irish people will read anything as long as it's about them. That's what I think. We are our own greatest subject and though we've gone and looked elsewhere about the world we have found that there are just no people, no subject as fascinating as We Ourselves.
Niall Williams
#25. Many suffer so that some day all Irish people may know justice and peace..
Wolfe Tone
#26. The presidency is an independent office and the Irish people whom I appreciate so much and I take with such responsibility have given a very clear mandate on a very clear set of ideas to me, as the ninth president.
Michael D. Higgins
#27. Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history.
Fiona Shaw
#28. I've always been conscious of the fact that there aren't enough Irish voices on British television compared to the amount of Irish people who live there.
Chris O'Dowd
#29. That's the Irish People all over - they treat a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing.
Sean O'Casey
#30. If Britain votes to leave the European Union, then that could have huge implications for the entire island of Ireland and, given all the predictions, would run counter to the democratic wishes of the Irish people.
Martin McGuinness
#31. It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.
John Bright
#32. I have no prouder boast to say I am Irish and have been privileged to fight for the Irish people and for Ireland. If I have a duty I will perform it to the full with the unshakable belief that we are a noble race and that chains and bounds have no part in us
Francis Hughes
#33. In a study, scientists report that drinking beer can be good for the liver. I'm sorry, did I say 'scientists'? I meant Irish people.
Tina Fey
#34. The Irish people will only be free, when they own everything from the plough to the stars
James Connolly
#35. Irish people will tell you that, because of their sad history of dispossession, owning a home is not just a way to avoid paying rent but a mark of freedom. In their rush to freedom, the Irish built their own prisons. And their leaders helped them to do it.
Michael Lewis
#36. The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.
John Hume
#37. If you are British, you soon get used to people not loving you. The Irish remind us of offenses from 100 years ago. Perhaps we should react to what the French did to us even longer ago.
Mick Jagger
#38. She was emotionally retarded having no sense of humour, cold and no people skills. She was like her mother was obsessed by appearances and wealth and longed to get married to escape from home.
Annette J. Dunlea
#39. My family calls me Declan. But most people call me E.C. I think it comes from my dad. It's an Irish convention. You usually call the first child by the initials.
Elvis Costello
#40. I own a lot of my house, because I'm Irish and from people who never owned anything.
Dan Savage
#41. Some people come into your life as blessings, and others come in your life as lessons. You are both to me.
Christy Pastore
#42. I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this.
Anne Enright
#43. Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
Brendan Behan
#44. I'm really not big on nationalism, to be honest with you. I really don't think it gets people anywhere except near a pile of dead bodies. I'm Irish, yeah, but I don't need to get up on a soapbox about it.
Dylan Moran
#45. Humor has historically been tied to the mores of the day. The Yellow Kid was predicated on what people thought was funny about the immigrant Irish. When you're different in a society, you're funny.
Will Eisner
#46. Half the people in London were not English anyway: they were Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Caribbean, Indian and Chinese. All the drug dealers came from islands: Maltese men sold pep pills,
Ken Follett
#47. All my people are from Ireland. I was born in Manchester, but I am Irish.
Tyson Fury
#48. I've had support from all sides, from people who call themselves Irish, from Northern Irish, to the whole of the UK, to people in America, and it would be terrible for me to segregate myself from one of those groups that support me so much.
Rory McIlroy
#49. This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever. [speaking about the Irish]
Sigmund Freud
#50. I used to be Irish Catholic. Now I'm an American - you know, you grow.
George Carlin
#51. Irish and Italian are my two favourite people.
Paul Haggis
#52. In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
Samuel Butler
#53. I'm still an Irish republican; I absolutely believe in Irish unity and am working to achieve that. But over the course of 15 years or more, people like myself and others have been working to end the vicious cycle of conflict.
Martin McGuinness
#54. I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people. Just who, precisely, they were, I have never known. I might be part Negro, might be part Jew, part Muslim, part Irish. So I can't afford to be supercilious about any group of people because I may be that people.
James A. Michener
#55. I'm just a true Irish boy at heart. I'm just myself, I stick by my guns and I treat people the way I think they should be treated, regardless of their status. And I just have a laugh.
Colin Farrell
#56. I believe in all of these Irish myths, like leprechauns. Not the pot of gold, not the Lucky Charms leprechauns. But maybe was there something in the traditional sense? I believe that this stuff came from somewhere other than people's imaginations.
Megan Fox
#57. The Irish Government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.
Jack Lynch
#58. Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"
they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108)
Cornel West
#59. I'm interested in why people talk like they do. Like Boston Irish. It's so laid back. Why is that?
Sean Bean
#60. I like Irish pubs, except for all the loud music and drinking, and people acting like idiots.
Dov Davidoff
#61. If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.
William Howard Taft
#62. People do think I'm Jewish. But we're Irish Catholic. My father had a brogue.
Martin Short
#63. The Spanish and Cuban people have the same kind of wakes the Irish do. They go on for two or three days and drink a lot of booze and eat a lot of food.
Desi Arnaz
#64. Irish girls, red hair,' I replied, remembering a picture of them from Mrs. Casnoff's 'People Who Want to Kill Us All' lecture at Hex Hall last year.
Rachel Hawkins
#65. I don't want to, in any way, characterize a race or a people or get accused of racial profiling, but the Irish, as lyrical and romantic as they can be in their poetry, they can be every bit as repressed in their personal relations.
Stephen Lang
#66. Many people die of thirst but the Irish are born with one.
Spike Milligan
#67. The malnourished Irish were very vulnerable to diseases. In fact, more people died from illness than from actual starvation. Typhus
Ryan Hackney
#68. I think the world's a little smaller these days. With the Internet and the availability of people, the pool of English speaking actors - not just American actors, but Brits, Australians, New Zealanders, Irish. We're all up for grabs.
Sonya Walger
#69. We Irish don't really need thousands of people surging behind a big brass band to have a parade. One guitar player and a few people whistling will do the job.
Gene Tierney
#70. I always gravitate towards anything from Ireland. With Irish lit, I love the use of language, but also in many instances, the Irish writers are writing about people and circumstances that I can relate to.
Daniel Woodrell
#71. I feel warm toward my Irish side, but I don't know the country or the people. Hearing a traditional Irish fiddle, I feel very connected to Ireland, but that's a nostalgia many people feel who aren't Irish at all.
Daniel Hope
#72. We have to be concerned about the gun killing that people who are Americans, who are Irish, and who are English, who are all around the country.
Dalia Mogahed
#73. Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us
Patrick Pearse
#74. What's fascinating is where they come from in the world. People in Bangladesh, a chap in a fire-base in Tikrit in Iraq. Chap in an Irish pub in Dublin. And lovely to think this literary network - or rather network of readers - is well spread out.
John Gimlette
#75. I know Irish-American people. I know what their homes look like. I know what they have for dinner. I know how they turn a phrase.
Alice McDermott
#76. The Irish are people who will never have leaders, for at the great moment they always desert them. They have produced one skeleton
Parnell
never a man.
James Joyce
#77. When others stood idly by, you and your families gave your all, in defence of a risen people and in pursuit of Irish freedom and unity.
Gerry Adams
#78. It is a great comfort to a rambling people to know that somewhere there is a permanent home
perhaps it is the most final of the comforts they ever really know.
Ben Robertson
#79. Plays by people like Martin McDonagh and Brian Friel attract huge audiences, not because they're Irish, but because they're brilliant plays.
Garry Hynes
#80. My people - before I was changed - they exchanged this as a sign of devotion. It's a Claddagh ring. The hands represent friendship; the crown represents loyalty ... and the heart ... Well, you know ... Wear it with the heart pointing towards you. It means you belong to somebody. Like this.
Joss Whedon
#81. I believe that the interior life is the same for all of us. And because they're steeped in faith, Irish-American Catholics are a people who have a language for the examined life.
Alice McDermott
#82. They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)
John Steinbeck
#83. Many black people I know are proud of the Irish part of their heritage - an Irish grandparent, say - but they recognise that many people believe in a form of racial purity. And it is from that belief that prejudice starts.
Tom Paulin
#84. Imagine if we were all magical leprechauns, and every wish ever made on a four-leaf clover obliged us to help others obtain their wishes. Now imagine if people simply lived like this were true.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#85. Alice Oswald. With Hughes and Heaney gone, people are looking around for the best British and Irish poets. Oswald is one of our finest.
Tobias Hill
#86. Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American.
Lionel Sosa
#87. The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.
Samuel Johnson
#88. Irish politics are tribal, incestuous, tangled and furtive, incomprehensible even to many of the people involved.
Tana French
#89. They say there are only two kinds of people on St. Patrick's Day: the Irish, and the people that drive them home.
Conan O'Brien
#90. Dublin was an English city, one of the loveliest. The most Irish thing about it was the shifting drab flow of the poor people
Jan Morris
#91. The Irish seem to want their artists to function as surrogate priests - sources of authority, founts of wisdom, people who will offer us free-range organic consolation, you name it. It's not a position I feel comfortable with.
Alex Johnston
#92. I'm black and Cuban, Australian and Irish, and like most people in America, I'm someone whose roots come from somewhere else. I'm a mixed race, first-generation American.
Soledad O'Brien
#93. In Irish law, busking is considered vagrancy - you can be arrested for it. It's risky asking people for money in public. So it's not like it's a high-art job. And people who do it as a high-art job make very little money.
Glen Hansard
#94. There are more people of Irish descent in Boston and surrounding New England than there are in Ireland.
Anonymous
#95. And the history of civilization is littered with dead "races" (Frankish, Italian, German, Irish) later abandoned because they no longer serve their purpose - the organization of people beneath, and beyond, the umbrella of rights.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#96. If we turn to early Irish literature, as we naturally may, to see what sort of people the Irish were in the infancy of the race, we find ourselves wandering in delighted bewilderment through a darkness shot with lightning and purple flame.
Sean O Faolain
#97. Now, Benny was no eejit. He wasn't expecting the Tunisian nationals to be Irish. What he did expect was darkish people with Irishy personalities.
That was not what he got.
The Tunisians weren't interested in conforming to Benny's preconceptions. They stubbornly insisted on being themselves.
Eoin Colfer
#98. She was brought up strict Irish Catholic ... Protestants were evil, monstrous people and somehow probably contagious, and Katie grew up fearing them, praying to God she'd never see one.
Lisa Genova
#99. New people arrive and they could be Jewish or Irish or Polish or even coloured. Our old customers are moving out to Long Island and we can't follow them, so we need new customers every week. We treat everyone the same. We welcome every single person who comes into this store
Colm Toibin
#100. To us, it's vey natural. Initially, it sounded kind of strange to people, because it is different to put traditional Irish music in a pop and rock mode. But they get used to it
it is our sound.
Andrea Corr
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