Quotes About The Irish

#1. When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

Edna O'Brien

#2. 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

#3. The Irish loved their cabbage. The Germans pickled their cabbage and the Italians made spaghetti sauce and listed to the opera.

Hank Bracker

#4. I don't have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn't very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge 'cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago.

Benny Goodman

#5. In 1889, I predict, the legislative stage of the Irish question will have arrived; and the union with England, which shall then have cursed Ireland for nine tenths of a century, will be repealed.

John Boyle O'Reilly

#6. Making it [St. Patrick's Day] a great day for the Irish, but just an ok day if you're looking for a quiet tavern to talk, read or have a white wine spritzer.

Jon Stewart

#7. Three Scotsmen of the clan McKay were looking for a fourth member to fight four members of the Irish clan Magee ... 'I'm not one of you,' my father pointed out. 'You see, I'm one of the clan M-c-C-A-Y.' And that is how I got both my name and my sense of humor.

Winsor McCay

#8. Now the Irish have a strange custom: whenever the name of County Mayo is spoken (whether in praise, blame, or non-committally, as soon as the world Mayo is spoken, the Irish add: 'God help us!" It sounds like the response in a litany: 'Lord, have mercy upon us!

Heinrich Boll

#9. I'm a big fan of the Irish accent. After a couple of drinks, I start to get a bit of an Irish lilt, too.

Emily Ratajkowski

#10. Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it.

Conor Cruise O'Brien

#11. I went into the world confident my tea training would open many doors. And I did particularly well with the Irish and fellow Nova Scotians over 60. But this only got me so far. It took a long time to cultivate the tricks of easy social interaction.

Lynn Coady

#12. We have, therefore, directed the Irish Army authorities to have field hospitals established in County Donegal adjacent to Derry and at other points along the Border where they may be necessary.

Jack Lynch

#13. We call upon a God so great, amidst a very sacred date, to bless us with a mighty feast of wine and bread and beast. To Dagda of the Irish Isle, God of Earth with charming smile, we gently do invoke thy power; be with us on the witching hour.

Katerina Martinez

#14. 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

#15. 'Lollipop Opera' is the backdrop to Finsbury Park. A place that is very thriving, interracial and lot of music stores, Greek, Turkish, all sorts of immigrant music. It's utter Englishness. It blends the Jamaicans, the Irish. It's like what Jim Reeves did with American country music.

John Lydon

#16. The Irish question is this: Do the Irish know the answer to everything? ... And the answer to that is that we know fifteen different answers to every question. All of them right.

Olivia Robertson

#17. Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.

Michel De Montaigne

#18. Many cultures believe that on a certain day - Halloween, the Irish Samhain Eve, Mexico's 'Dia de los Muertos' - the veil between this world and the next is especially thin.

Michael Dirda

#19. Only the Irish working class remains as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.

James Connolly

#20. 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

#21. The Irish Six Million Dollar man only cost three quid.

Frank Carson

#22. God created whiskey to keep the Irish from taking over the world.

Kinky Friedman

#23. 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

#24. The British Government and the Irish Government have accepted very clearly the Mitchell Report.

Dick Spring

#25. 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

#26. [on the Irish] A race of poets and wordsmiths, my ass.

M. Edward McNally

#27. There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.

John Millington Synge

#28. You think the Welsh are friendly, but the Irish are fabulous.

Bonnie Tyler

#29. Most of my jokes are racist - usually about the Irish.

Frank Carson

#30. My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.

James Cagney

#31. 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

#32. We may conceive an hope that the next generation will in tongue and heart and every way else become English; so as there will be no difference or distinction but the Irish sea betwixt us.

Sir John Davies

#33. God invented whiskey so the Irish wouldn't rule the world.

Jim Bishop

#34. The Irish mingled their Christianity with folk beliefs in fairies and changelings.

Ryan Hackney

#35. Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?

Elizabeth Bowen

#36. There's something about the Irish that is remarkable.

Fiona Shaw

#37. The Irish are the one race for which psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever ... because they already live in a dream world.

Sigmund Freud

#38. I was beginning to understand how the Irish mentality worked. The more foolish, illogical or surreal one's actions were perceived t be (and mine surely fell into one of these categories), the wider the arms of hospitality were opened in salutation.

Tony Hawks

#39. As for the charm and innocence I hoped to find -- it exists, it really does, but consider what it's buried in. Racism. Misogyny and homophobia so absolute as to be nearly universal. Hatred of the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese -- not that many of them are seen in these parts

Robert Charles Wilson

#40. The working classes in England were always sentimental, and the Irish and Scots and Welsh. The upper-class English are the stiff-upper-lipped ones. And the middle class. They're the ones who are crippled emotionally because they can't move up, and they're desperate not to move down.

Tracey Ullman

#41. 'The Irish Duke' is a sequel to 'The Decadent Duke' about Lady Georgina Gordon who married the Duke of Bedford. 'The Irish Duke' tells the story of their daughter, Lady Louisa, who married James Hamilton, the powerful and wealthy Duke of Abercorn.

Virginia Henley

#42. Art is for [the Irish] inseparable from artifice: of that, the theatre is the home. Possibly, it was England made me a novelist.

Elizabeth Bowen

#43. Westlife earnt millions. We were on the 'Irish Times' Rich List. And then ... I'm not!

Shane Filan

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. Supreme egotism and utter seriousness are necessary for the greatest accomplishment, and these the Irish find hard to sustain; at some point, the instinct to see life in a comic light becomes irresistible, and ambition falls before it

William V. Shannon

#47. The Irish ... are full of the fear of the Lord and the joy of living, and they don't know how to combine the two, but they'll sure have a good time trying.

Mercedes McCambridge

#48. Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.

Diane Wakoski

#49. Perhaps he found it strange being accompanied by a Chinese-Nigerian arms trafficking pirate, but the Irish priest had just followed me silently on board the covert government transport.

Dayo Ntwari

#50. Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth ... The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.

Lydia M. Child

#51. Hardly any famine affects more than 5 percent, almost never more than 10 percent, of the population. The largest proportion of a population affected was the Irish famine of the 1840s, which came close to 10 percent over a number of years.

Amartya Sen

#52. When I get a very generous introduction like that I explain that I'm emotionally moved, but on the other hand I'm Irish and the Irish are very emotionally moved. My mother is Irish and she cries during beer commercials.

Barry McCaffrey

#53. That's the Irish all over
they treat a joke as a serious thing and a serious thing as a joke.

Sean O'Casey

#54. The Irish job was something that had to be sorted out.

Jack Charlton

#55. I wrote a script. I actually enjoyed writing it more than acting. It's about the Irish rebellion of 1920, which is a fascinating period and place for me.

Tom Berenger

#56. If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.

Brendan Behan

#57. Oh, the Irish were building the railroads down through Mexico, through Chihuahua. They finished the railroads when they finished out in the West Coast, and they went down and put the trains into Mexico.

Anthony Quinn

#58. They believed that Britain was in Ireland defending their own interests, therefore the Irish had the right to use violence to put them out. My argument was that that type of thinking was out of date.

John Hume

#59. The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

Samuel Johnson

#60. I go to Spain a lot, in winter, for a blast of sunlight to banish the blues brought on by the Irish greys and drizzle. I love the cities of the Spanish interior.

Kevin Barry

#61. The British leadership has acknowledged that it only became possible to end the violence in North Ireland when it stopped thinking of the [Irish Republican Army] as "a terrorist organization" and began treating it as a political actor with genuine grievances that deserved to be addressed.

Richard A. Falk

#62. Rain is also very difficult to film, particularly in Ireland because it's quite fine, so fine that the Irish don't even acknowledge that it exists.

Alan Parker

#63. The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.

William Hazlitt

#64. Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-wine.

Patrick O'Brian

#65. Gladstone .. spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question, ...

W.C. Sellar

#66. The Irish and British, they love satire, it's a large part of the culture.

Ben Nicholson

#67. Kelly held up a finger. "No half-assed middle school kissing, either."
"Okay."
"I want the whole deal."
"This is starting to feel like I'm leasing a car or something."
"I'm serious, I want the Irish special."
Nick rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. "Fine. Jesus.

Abigail Roux

#68. If you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom then our children will win it by a better deed.

Padraig Pearse

#69. To marry the Irish is to look for poverty.

J.P. Donleavy

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen.

Peter Ackroyd

#73. It is not blood that makes you Irish but a willingness to be part of the Irish Nation.

Thomas Davis

#74. Irish nationalists can never be the assenting parties to the mutilation of the Irish nation. The two nation theory is to us an abomination and a blasphemy.

John Redmond

#75. It is a fallacy to believe that a Republic of any kind can be won through the shackled Free State. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The Free State is British created and serves British Imperialist interests. It is the buffer erected between British Capitalism and the Irish Republic.

Liam Mellows

#76. The Irish people will only be free, when they own everything from the plough to the stars

James Connolly

#77. The Irish are great for their tunes, but all their lovesongs are sad and their warsongs happy.

Colum McCann

#78. I don't think Ireland has ever had a genius for the novel. Of course, there were plenty of Irish novels, but I don't think that was ever the natural means of expression for the Irish.

Lady Gregory

#79. I have often heard it said that the Irish are too ready to forgive. It is a noble failing.

Katharine Tynan

#80. The trouble with the Irish question always has been that it was an English question.

Katharine Tynan

#81. The 'Irish Question' has dogged English politics for four hundred years and will continue to measure out its irresolution in blood and human lives until there is peace in Ireland.

Kevin Toolis

#82. I will be a President for all the people, whether they voted for me or not, whether they are young or old and particularly for the Irish abroad. I'm looking forward to it and I think it will be exciting and wonderful.

Michael D. Higgins

#83. 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

#84. The Irish fought the Italians until they started marrying them. And then they both fought the Jews until they started marrying them.

Pete Hamill

#85. 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

#86. Musical comedy is the Irish stew of drama. Anything may be put into it, with the certainty that it will improve the general effect.

P.G. Wodehouse

#87. More guilt, guilt, guilt. That's the Irish condition.

Adrian McKinty

#88. According to Rushdoony, the conditions of the Irish transport were as bad or worse than what we know of slave ships, and the condition of Irish immigrants on arrival was "far worse than that of slaves:

Julie Ingersoll

#89. The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scotts as a joke, but the Scotts haven't seen the joke yet.

Oliver Herford

#90. Such a scheme.. the betrayal of the national democracy of Industrial Ulster, would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements while it lasted.

James Connolly

#91. It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.

Brendan Behan

#92. 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

#93. White America looks at the Vietnamese, the Irish, the Jews, and they say, 'What's the problem with the blacks?' The resentment you hear around this town is based on that, not on old ideas of superiority.

Greg Iles

#94. Even when they have nothing, the Irish emit a kind of happiness, a joy.

Fiona Shaw

#95. The economy in Ireland has been rampaging ahead for the last 15 years. Barring an international, political or natural catastrophe, things can only get better for the Irish.

Eddie Murphy

#96. Am I the Irish comedian with half a finger? No, I'm the Irish comedian with nine and a half fingers.

Dave Allen

#97. Books, ingeniously coupled with music and alcohol, enabled the Irish to transcend reality.

Joe Queenan

#98. 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

#99. Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable ... unimaginable ... unspeakable.

Paul Keating

#100. All the same, she wondered if they did know what she thought and felt, if they knew without knowing, in that way the Irish were so adept at doing.

Benjamin Black