The Craic?

Famous Irish Quotes

“Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century.” – Author John McGahern

“A Kerry footballer with an inferiority complex is one who thinks he’s just as good as everybody else.”
– Author John B. Keane

“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
– Flannery O’Connor

“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” – Sean O’Casey

“I think there’s a bit of the devil in everybody. There’s a bit of a priest in everybody, too, but I enjoyed playing the devil more. He was more fun.” – Actor Gabriel Byrne

“Though the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword speaks louder and stronger at any given moment.”
– Leonard Wibberley, Irish author of comic novel “The Mouse That Roared”

“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.” – Former U.S. General Barry McCaffrey

“The immigrant’s heart marches to the beat of two quite different drums, one from the old homeland and the other from the new. The immigrant has to bridge these two worlds, living comfortably in the new and bringing the best of his or her ancient identity and heritage to bear on life in an adopted homeland.”
– Irish President McAleese

“Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.” – Seamus Heaney

“I think the Irish woman was freed from slavery by bingo. They can go out now, dressed up, with their handbags and have a drink and play bingo. And they deserve it.” – Author John B. Keane

“Making peace, I have found, is much harder than making war.” - Gerry Adams

“Hugging trees has a calming effect on me. I’m talking about enormous trees that will be there when we are all dead and gone. I’ve hugged trees in every part of this little island.” – Gerry Adams

“A drunkard is a dead man, and all dead men are drunk.” – Yeats

“Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.” – Sean O’Casey

“Travelling - I was all my life at it. I’d still rather be travelling around. I’m always thinking of it. It was a better and a nicer time on the road - more freedom along the roads. We’d be selling tinware, saucepans, cans - country people knew us well at those times and were very nice.” – Former Irish Traveller (or “Tinker”) Nan McDonagh

“I spent 90% of my money on women and drink. The rest I wasted.” – Soccer superstar George Best

“It’s easy to love humanity when you’re this far away from it.” – Actor Daniel Day Lewis (who has lived in Ireland at various times), quoted while looking down from the mountains of Luggala, County Wicklow in The New York Times

“No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation’s heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream.”- Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847), in an 1831 letter to Bishop Doyle.

“We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.” – Winston Churchill

“He was a one-off, a unique figure of medieval power, intrigue and complexity, surrounded by mystery and money, and protected by populism and cleverness and the well-timed one-liner.” – Maire Goeghegan-Quinn, former Irish cabinet member, speaking of three-time Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey, who died June 13, 2006

“You know, I have a theory about Charlie Haughey. If you give him enough rope, he’ll hang you.”
– BBC Ireland reporter Leo Enright.

“He is the best, the most skillful, the most devious and the most cunning.” – Charles Haughey’s description of his successor as Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern.

“My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, ‘So Far, so good.” – John McGahern, Leitrim author who wrote “The Barracks” and five other novels

“Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning [to] consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?” – Eamon De Valera, on Victory Day in Europe, May 8, 1945, responding in a radio speech to criticism by Winston Churchill of Ireland’s neutrality in World War II, a speech in which De Valera also thanked Churchill for not invading Ireland.

“It was a bold man who ate the first oyster.” – Jonathan Swift

“Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.”
– James Cagney

“If you could drink dreams like the Irish streams. Then the world would be high as the mountain of morn
In the Pool they told us the story, How the English divided the land...” – John Lennon, “The Luck of the Irish” (song)

“In some of these institutions the buildings were designedly rendered gloomy by the windows being obscured, so that the inmates were severed from the outside world almost as effectively as if they were in prison.” – From a report on Ireland’s Magdalen Asylums published in 1907 by a humanitarian group from London

“Well, it takes all kinds of men to build a railroad.” “No sir, just us Irish.” – Railroad barons in “Dodge City,” Warner Bros., 1939

“I saw a fleet of fishing boats...I flew down almost touching the craft and yelled at them, asking if I was on the right road to Ireland. They just stared. Maybe they didn’t hear me. Maybe I didn’t hear them. Or maybe they thought I was just a crazy fool.” – Charles Lindbergh

“A doctor’s reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.” – William Butler Yeats

“Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.” – George Bernard Shaw

“I am a drinker with a writing problem.” – Brendan Behan

“I only drink on two occasions - When I am thirsty and when I’m not thirsty.” – Brendan Behan

“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” – Flannery O’Connor

“Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.” – George Bernard Shaw