Top 43 Quotes About Irish History
#1. I went further and further back through the centuries to get a sense of perspective but now at least I understand why Irish history evokes such strong passions and emotions.
James D'arcy
#2. Like a lot of Irish households we read a lot of Irish history. It was almost Soviet, raising the next generation with a mythic view of their history.
Fiona Shaw
#3. I felt that the IRA, in the context of Irish history, and Sinn Fein were a legitimate force that had to be recognized, and you wouldn't have peace without them.
Peter T. King
#4. The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school.
James Nesbitt
#5. Bill Clinton was one of the greatest presidents that we've seen. He was involved in the peace process in the very beginning, and he not only showed himself to be knowledgeable about Irish history and Irish-British relationships, but also he was very sympathetic to the idea of resolving conflict.
Martin McGuinness
#6. Irish history having been forbidden in schools, has been, to a great extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years.
Lady Gregory
#7. Chemical properties in the peat stop anything from rotting, so bogs are the "bank vaults" of Irish history, protecting whatever is put in them. A bog-cutter recently described finding a slab of butter, still edible after more than a hundred years.
Carmel McCaffrey
#8. The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).
W.C. Sellar
#9. The executed men were cursed, and praised, and doubted, and despised, and held to account, and blackened, and wondered at, and mourned, all in a confusion complicated infinitely by the site of war.
Sebastian Barry
#10. Well, they may not be civilized, but they certainly are confident - and this confidence is one of the open-handed pleasures of early Irish literature.
Thomas Cahill
#11. We have a tradition of passing our history orally and singing a lot of it and writing songs about it and there's kind of a calling in Irish voices when they're singing in their Irish accent.
Sinead O'Connor
#12. The illicit Irish homemade spirit, poitin was frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which made its manufacture grave enough of a sin to require a bishop's absolution rather than that of the regular parish priest. Ah, the lengths the Irish will go to for "the demon drink!
Rashers Tierney
#13. I am a war man in the day of war, but I am a peace man in the day of peace.
Michael Collins
#14. Whether serving in the military, building industry, organizing politically, or making their way in any other part of American culture, the Irish were determined to create a free and prosperous life for themselves. This Irish-American struggle led to social and political progress for all Americans.
Rashers Tierney
#15. Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?
Goldwin Smith
#16. Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language.
Daniel O'Connell
#17. For a tiny speck in the Atlantic, Ireland has made an outsize contribution to world literature. It's a legacy we can all be proud of, one that would take many pages (or indeed a whole library of books) to recount in full.
Rashers Tierney
#18. No one in the church, in 1970, knew that the doctrine of pre-tribulation rapture had never been found in history before 1830, or that it was first promoted by an Irish minister named John Nelson Darby.
Ken Dahl Gabby Schulz
#19. Be it in the rough-and-tumble world of inner-city politics or the bare-knuckle boxing ring, the Irish rightly earned their fightin' moniker.
Rashers Tierney
#20. Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history.
Fiona Shaw
#21. The history of the Welsh, the Irish, the Highlanders, is just the same as that of the Gauls, one of internecine feud, no political cohesion, no capacity for merging private interests, forgetting private grudges for a patriotic cause.
Sabine Baring-Gould
#22. 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
#23. What I was caught up in, I dimly understood, was the embodiment of history
Peter Cunningham
#24. It's often said that "the Irish built America. The truth is, not only did they build it, they also manufactured, repaired, and cleaned it, especially in the decades before and after the potato famine.
Rashers Tierney
#25. 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
#26. If you are a Northern Irish actor, maybe subconsciously more than consciously, you do have an instinctive responsibility at some point to tackle the recent history of where we have come from. It's not only a responsibility, but a privilege.
James Nesbitt
#27. James Joyce once called Guinness stout "the wine of Ireland." Indeed it's one of the most successful beers worldwide. Ten million glasses of this ambrosial liquid are consumed with great gusto each day.
Rashers Tierney
#28. The typical Irish peasant ate about 10 pounds of potatoes each day and soon towered in physical size over their rural English equivalents who mainly ate bread.
Rashers Tierney
#29. 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
#30. Scarlett O'Hara's father, Thomas, is an Irish immigrant who names his plantation Tara, after the home of the High Kings in Ireland. In an appealing nod to the "luck of the Irish," we read that Thomas O'Hara won his lands in a card game!
Rashers Tierney
#31. Being Irish and a citizen of the world, has made me truly appreciate Irish culture, music and history. Whether you're first, second generation Irish or even with no connection to Ireland, you should visit in 2013 for a unique experience.
Liam Neeson
#32. It's a great wonder to me, the Irish attachment to our history. What is it but a series of lamentations?
Dorothy Salisbury Davis
#33. The original Guinness Brewery in Dublin has a 9,000-year lease on its property at a perpetual rate of 45 pounds per year--one of the best bargains in Irish commercial history!
Rashers Tierney
#35. 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
#36. Redmond Howard, a politically aware witness to the Rising and a critic of the rebels, wrote in its aftermath: 'There never was, I believe, an Irish crime -- if crime it can be called -- which had not its roots in an English folly.
Tim Pat Coogan
#37. I kind of have an interest in all history. And I suspect it comes from being Irish - we like stories, we like telling stories, which makes a lot of us lean towards being writers or actors or directors.
Colm Meaney
#38. Irish fiction is full of secrets, guilty pasts, divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history.
Terry Eagleton
#39. The Irish way of telling a story is a complex and elaborate one, complete with wild exaggerations, a certain delight in improbable fantasy, and a heightened sense of drama.
Rashers Tierney
#40. [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
#41. In 1903, Sir James Power, Lord Mayor of Dublin, was surprised to note on a transatlantic trip that the typical Irish immigrant in America was now "not merely a hewer of wood and a drawer of water." In fact, he remarked that they are "found occupying...respectable positions in society.
Rashers Tierney
#42. With our gift for language and willingness to stand up and be counted, as well as heaps of charm and charisma, we Irish have long been an integral part of American political life.
Rashers Tierney
#43. I am not in the business of pointing fingers or making excuses. However, recent history has shown that I, like thousands of others in Ireland, incorrectly relied upon the persons who guided Anglo and who wrongfully sought to portray a 'blue chip' Irish banking sector.
Sean Quinn
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