Irish American Quotes

All my people are from Ireland. I was born in Manchester, but I am Irish.

Being the U.S. champion is a big deal for me. Knowing that my ancestors built this country, it's kind of like, the Irish were treated badly in this country for a long time, with a lot of tacky Irish stereotypes, so to me, it's kind of like a bragging right.

Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: 'No Irish Need Apply.'

I was raised in an Irish-American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840's, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on.

I'm one hundred percent Irish, and I'm very proud that I'm Irish American, though I don't know exactly where my ancestors came from. I just know County Cork.

My dad is Irish. I spent my childhood going back and forth between Ireland and America.

When I started writing, most of the police department in New York City, especially above the rank of detective, were Irish, Irish-American. I thought it would be more interesting... to use the actual ethnic background in New York City at the time.

Frank McCourt is a great guy.

Thus I encountered one of the basic experiences of being an Irish American--the awareness that we had a political tradition that was not entirely admirable. It took quite a lot of time for me to realize it was also a basic American experience--this clash between ideal--in my case inculcated by nuns and Jesuits--and hard realities.

Next to President of the United States, Ambassador to Ireland is surely one of the best jobs an Irish American can hold.

I'm first and foremost an Irishman, by birth, by nature, by soul, but an American citizen through and through as well.

Sports biography at its best. Rich in period detail, anecdote, and fresh perspective, Strong Boy paints both the good and the bad sides of success, as America's growing celebrity culture turned a simple Irish American gladiator into a national, in fact international hero. A very human story with profound parallels for our sports-obsessed culture today!

Being Irish was a big thing for me, particularly growing up in Chicago.

I'm from outside of Boston, and in Boston, people are so passionate about their Irishness.

I gotta lot of Black Irish in me.

There's a certain kind of guy, a certain kind of humor, that goes with Irish cops and firemen.

Three-quarters of my family is Irish. Of course, the 'Kazee' is not.

My parents were both first-generation Irish Catholics raised in Brooklyn.

I always tell people, you know, [J.F.Kennedy's] grandfather was born in Ireland and he was Irish-Catholic, and I thought, so maybe I could someday try do what he did.

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.

Being Irish-American myself, Irish-American material is readily at hand to me.

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.

My grandparents were all born in the U.S., but their parents came from Ireland.

All my family look Irish. They act Irish. My sister even has red hair... it's crazy. I'm the one that doesn't seem Irish. None of the kids in my family, my siblings, speak with an Irish accent... we've never lived there full-time; we weren't born there. We just go there once or twice a year. It's weird. Our parents sound Irish, but we don't.

All my family's from Boston.