Quotes About Northern Ireland

#1. Jonny Evans plays sort of international football with Northern Ireland

Phil Thompson

#2. 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

#3. Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, not Britain, as can clearly be seen from aerial photographs.

Jeremy Hardy

#4. When you look at what I've done here, you see a consistent theme of reforms which is not driven by any dogma from across the water, but a radical agenda to make sure Northern Ireland's people enjoy equal opportunities, driven by the values of social justice.

Peter Hain

#5. Quite simply, I maintained contact with Sinn Fein and believed that there had to be a political, not a military, solution to the situation in Northern Ireland.

Jeremy Corbyn

#6. Northern Ireland still suffers from its past, and it will take generations to escape sectarianism and for violence to end totally. Nonetheless, it is in a different place now than during the Troubles, and it will not go back to the old days.

Jonathan Powell

#7. We're nondenominational. I come from Northern Ireland, and we've had religious wars for years. I didn't want to create an illusion that my God is better than your God. So our show is a spiritual show, not a religious show.

Roma Downey

#8. There are two traditions in Northern Ireland. There are two main religious denominations. But there is only one true moral denomination. And it wants peace.

David Trimble

#9. Northern Ireland has treated me well, you know?

James Nesbitt

#10. The basis on which the Good Friday agreement was constructed was in addressing those problems in the history of Northern Ireland, the social and constitutional problems as well as the military problems that have been unaddressed for centuries.

John Reid

#11. My dad grew up in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, desperate to get to London. I grew up in London, so I don't know what it's like to yearn for the big city from a small town.

Daniel Radcliffe

#12. In my teens, I joined the Parachute Regiment. I jumped out of lots of airplanes, as much as the Government budget would allow us to. I did two active tours of duty: Northern Ireland, and then the Falklands war.

Mark Burnett

#13. I was walking across King's Cross station when a drunken Irishman came stumbling up and flung his arms around me. He wanted to thank me for the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Ann Widdecombe

#14. But this was Northern Ireland in 1981 which was slightly less conservative than, say, Salem in 1692

Adrian McKinty

#15. Northern Ireland were in white, which was quite appropriate because three inches of snow had to be cleared from the pitch before kick off

John Motson

#16. Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion.

Quentin Crisp

#17. That's football, Mike, Northern Ireland have had several chances and haven't scored but England have had no chances and scored twice.

Trevor Brooking

#18. I was one of the many kids in Northern Ireland who grew up in the countryside and had an idyllic childhood well away from the Troubles.

James Nesbitt

#19. I was born in Northern Ireland in 1951. I lived most of my life there until 1986 or 1987.

Paul Muldoon

#20. People were so keen to get investment. In those days, there was quite significant unemployment in Northern Ireland, and that had been the general pattern in Northern Ireland for many, many years.

John Hume

#21. People in Northern Ireland vote for their church, they don't vote with their heads; it is ridiculous.

Frank Carson

#22. I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.

Colum McCann

#23. I would say that something important for me and for my generation in Northern Ireland was the 1947 Education Act, which allowed students who won scholarships to go on to secondary schools and thence to university.

Seamus Heaney

#24. When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict.

Harri Holkeri

#25. Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northern Ireland or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?

Barry Goldwater

#26. Northern Ireland are ten minutes away from their finest victory. There's 15 minutes to go here.

John Motson

#27. The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. It was like the Nazis treatment of the Jews.

Alec Reid

#28. My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.

Seamus Heaney

#29. I believe we've spent many years trying to bring about talks which have all the Parties in Northern Ireland involved so that there'd be inclusive talks.

Dick Spring

#30. Journalism took me around the world. I worked in London for ten years and reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the first Gulf War.

Michael Robotham

#31. I'm going to be looking forward, asked to be judged on my record, not taken back as has been the - in a sense, the tendency throughout politics in Northern Ireland, is to always look back, always look at what was said a long time ago, instead of looking forward.

Peter Hain

#32. We're on the verge of civil war in Northern Ireland. Why? Because if you take away the forums of democracy you don't have anything left.

Ian Paisley

#33. In Northern Ireland, I truly, effortlessly, knew who I was. I knew where I belonged. I felt completely and utterly secure.

Kenneth Branagh

#34. The big missing part of the jig-saw is to get the assembly back up and running here in Northern Ireland, to get shared government back in business, that is my objective, and we await the IRA statement to see if this will trigger a new dawn.

Peter Hain

#35. This is the great thing about Northern Ireland. I walk down the street and people stop me and say things like, 'I know you. You're that wee golfer, aren't you?' I say, 'Yeah, that's me.' They say, 'Keep it up, wee man.' It's very funny and that's why I want to stay here as long as possible.

Rory McIlroy

#36. Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.

Seamus Heaney

#37. It ... is the best opportunity we've had in the last 25 years to bring about a settlement in Northern Ireland, and I think we should leave no stone unturned to achieve that.

Dick Spring

#38. When you get out onto a glacier that's the size of Northern Ireland and it's so vast, and you're standing on top of it and you can see forever, it's so pure and clear that you can see for miles and miles and miles. You really do think, "Wow, there is a god!" You feel very humbled.

Richard Dormer

#39. John Irwin became one of the greatest peace workers in Northern Ireland.

Betty Williams

#40. That feeds anger, and I mean when we went and at last thank heavens got towards peace in Northern Ireland we went for justice within Northern Ireland as well as using security well, as well as a political settlement, but surely that is the lesson.

Clare Short

#41. I think a lot of us who grew up in Northern Ireland weren't politicised enough, frankly.

James Nesbitt

#42. When people are faced with a choice between the Northern Ireland they have got and the perfect Northern Ireland, they complain. But in the real world that isn't the choice.

John Reid

#43. Men, once enemies, are now jointly governing in Northern Ireland. And although there have been several hitches, by and large it's working well.

Betty Williams

#44. On the other hand, at some level the mass of unresolved issues in Northern Ireland does influence the fact that there are so many good writers in the place.

Paul Muldoon

#45. Ever since I left Northern Ireland, I've always been pretty comfortable on my own, which contradicts a lot of people's perceptions of me.

James Nesbitt

#46. At the opposite end of the spectrum from pacifism, we have a pusillanimous reluctance to use religious names for warring factions. In Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants are euphemized to 'Nationalists' and 'Loyalists' respectively.

Richard Dawkins

#47. I nominate the Reverend Ian Paisley for the position of First Minister of northern Ireland

Gerry Adams

#48. History, well taught, is the demythologising of the past ... Take any important issue of our time - Northern Ireland, Nuclear Disarmament, Race, The Welfare State, South Africa - and it becomes impossible to seriously confront any of them without understanding their historical background.

Alan Bullock

#49. I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.

Colm Toibin

#50. TV sounds are all the same; there's no difference between the sound of the wind in Northern Ireland and the wind on a Polynesian island.

Ryu Murakami

#51. In the Middle East, Iraq , Sudan , the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, and many other places in the world , religion has been so divisive that people have killed one another, believing they were doing the work of God .

John C. Danforth

#52. My job now, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is to take this process forward, and that I'm determined to do, whatever old clippings you dig out and whatever old quotes you put before me.

Peter Hain

#53. The flight I'm most excited about is the one that takes me back to Northern Ireland to visit family and friends.

Rory McIlroy

#54. Funnily enough, Northern Ireland is a great example of where politics can win over conflict. The decision to down arms and follow a political path would have been unthinkable once. It shows just what is possible.

James Nesbitt

#55. 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

#56. How can I intimidate Tiger Woods? I mean, the guy's got 75 or whatever PGA Tour wins, 14 majors. He's been the biggest thing ever in our sport. How could some little 23-year-old from Northern Ireland with a few wins come up and intimidate him.

Rory McIlroy

#57. I've always been fascinated with Ireland, especially Northern Ireland, having lived in London in the '80s when there was an Irish republican bombing campaign there.

John Gordon Sinclair

#58. They want to derail peace because they want to plunge Northern Ireland back into armed conflict.

Peter Mandelson

#59. Home will always be Northern Ireland but my schedule means for the next few years I won't be there as much. I can't do the same things that I did a year ago. That is I'm something conscious of, but I'm not sad about it. It's fine.

Rory McIlroy

#60. All the way through, we have been willing to take risks, provided at the end of it we can get a decent lasting settlement in Northern Ireland

Tony Blair

#61. You can get on with your job. I'm going to get on with mine. And mine is to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, that's what they expect from me and I'm not going to be deflected by interesting academic or media speculation or attempts to take the whole debate back.

Peter Hain

#62. I am an atheist. I was born a Catholic, but after I had traveled to Northern Ireland with some Catholic friends, and we had a horrible experience with the English Protestant police, I lost all taste for formal religion.

Guy Laliberte

#63. It's strange coming back to Northern Ireland, but it feels like a home away from home.

Sean Bean

#64. My father was from Northern Ireland, and coming from somewhere like that, your faith defines you. That's something we don't really understand outside Northern Ireland, but because of my parents and grandparents, I've experienced it.

Anna Maxwell Martin

#65. I am a proud product of Irish golf and the Golfing Union of Ireland and am hugely honoured to have come from very rich Irish sporting roots ... I am also a proud Ulsterman who grew up in Northern Ireland. That is my background and always will be.

Rory McIlroy

#66. In coming to that agreement, my party had a clear philosophy throughout. In Northern Ireland, we should have institutions that respected the differences of the people and that gave no victory to either side.

John Hume

#67. My dad was a keen actor when he was young; my auntie is heavily involved in amateur dramatics back in Northern Ireland, and my great aunt was a woman called Greer Garson.

Jamie Dornan

#68. There is not a single injustice in Northern Ireland that is worth the loss of a single British soldier or a single Irish citizen either.

James Callaghan

#69. I'm involved in Northern Ireland Screen and have been for a long time, so I keep my eyes open and ears to the ground.

Kenneth Branagh

#70. For far too long, the people of Northern Ireland have been denied an equal voice and equal representation in government. It is time for the Assembly and Executive to be up and running and the people's business to be addressed.

James T. Walsh

#71. On my Wikipedia page, it used to say I was born in Belfast, Ireland, then it said Belfast, Northern Ireland, and then it said Belfast, U.K. So there was a little war going on about where Belfast is located.

Adrian McKinty

#72. Your name is Sanchez, what are you doing playing for Northern Ireland?

Lawrie Sanchez

#73. A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.

Seamus Heaney

#74. I grew up in Derry, of course, and it was - Derry was the worst example of Northern Ireland's discrimination.

John Hume

#75. The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were symptomatic of change, violent change admittedly, but change nevertheless, and for the minority living there, change had been long overdue.

Seamus Heaney

#76. On the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.

Kate Adie

#77. When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?

Quentin Crisp

#78. We'll be launching the new public prosecution service in Northern Ireland tomorrow. I'll be doing it in Belfast tomorrow. This is an entirely new era, in which criminal justice now exercised on an equal basis, not the old basis in which community division was a feature.

Peter Hain

#79. My parents were Northern Ireland Labour party people. We read the 'Guardian' and the 'New Statesman,' listened to the BBC. The house was full of books. We didn't get a television until 'That Was The Week That Was' started. There was nothing to do but read.

Tom Paulin

#80. I think people from Northern Ireland have some kind of unspoken general feeling of what it is to be around segregation. You have an awareness of it because you know how much grief it's caused.

Jamie Dornan

#81. It's an extraordinary thing, this tiny little province of Northern Ireland, where carnage happened. And I was part of it. I grew up in it.

Liam Neeson

#82. My sights have always been on acting, on the creative process, never the lifestyle. Growing up in Northern Ireland when I did, everything was against you if you wanted to do something like that. But I was determined.

Colin Morgan

#83. Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can't be too optimistic.

Seamus Heaney

#84. Queen's University flies the flag for the arts in Northern Ireland and beyond.

Liam Neeson

#85. I believe that the Union Flag should change now to reflect the four nations of the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales

Ian Lucas

#86. We dont vote in Northern Ireland for what we want, we vote against what we dont want.

David

#87. In Northern Ireland, helicopters are not usually used to promote poetry.

Seamus Heaney

#88. I loved my time growing up in Northern Ireland doing youth drama, that is where it all began for me.

James Nesbitt

#89. You know, the pessimism which exists now in the Middle East existed in Northern Ireland, but we stayed at it.

George J. Mitchell

#90. I believe that Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule.

Ian Paisley

#91. How far from real the truth is. I wanted then to take every murdering bastard in Northern Ireland, and have them sleep for a night in my boy's blue rowboat, out on the lough, in the dark, among the reeds, turning in primal celtic patterns.

Colum McCann

#92. The United Kingdom and the European Union will remain indispensable partners of the United States even as they begin negotiating their ongoing relationship to ensure continued stability, security and prosperity for Europe, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the world.

Barack Obama

#93. In Northern Ireland, if you don't have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness.

Bernadette Devlin

#94. Barney was interested in bringing professional boxing back to Northern Ireland in a big way.

Barry McGuigan

#95. If Northern Ireland had better weather, it would be like New Zealand. It's an immensely beautiful country.

Ian Beattie

#96. Northern Ireland is the world's best kept secret, both in the character of its people and its scenery.

Liam Neeson

#97. Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.

Paul Muldoon

#98. My grandfather was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who lived in Northern Ireland and apparently when he sang in the synagogue he made everyone cry.

Jessie Ware

#99. The need for peace in Northern Ireland goes well beyond political stability. It now speaks to regional Europe and even global stability.

Hillary Clinton

#100. Since the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wants to remain a part of Great Britain, and since Ireland itself has shown little interest in reunification, the IRA's prospects for success through political channels have always been limited.

James Surowiecki