Irish Conflict Quotes

I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.

The gun is not out of Irish politics.

In the past I have defended the right of the IRA to engage in armed struggle. I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression, or for those who wanted a national republic.

I suspect that the only thing that will take Articles Two and Three out of the Irish Constitution is when the bombs begin to blow in Dublin in the way that they have been in Belfast and in London.

I've never paid attention to politics. I only have the vaguest notion of what the IRA is.

Convicted Spy!!! The penalty for all who associate with Auxiliary Cadets, Black and Tans and IRC — IRA Beware

His highness' viceroy of this nation is of little or no power with the old natives. Now both English and Irish begin to oppose your lordship's orders, and to lay aside their national quarrels

Unification is less important than the fact Ireland is now conflict-free.

The Irish on both sides are giving me a lot of trouble just at a difficult moment…. I sometimes wish we could submerge the whole lot of them and their Island for say, ten years, under the waves of the Atlantic.

It's time for the IRA to go out of business.

Tony Blair has made a good contribution to the cause of peace in Ireland. He has made a great effort to understand it. He has great empathy with the need to resolve the conflict.

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.

Much is said about English severity, but not a word about Irish provocation.

The Irish nation was possessed of the most blessed and happy conditions, before their own unskillful rage and fury brought this war upon them; and they have since had leisure enough thoroughly to consider and value the wonderful plenty, peace and security which they enjoyed till the year 1641, when they wantonly and disdainfully flung those blessings from them.

I lived in the Republic of Ireland. I wrote a book about the North but as an outsider. The hatreds there were not mine. I never felt them. I liked how open in most ways Catalan nationalism was, compared to Irish nationalism. I disliked the violence and cruelty in Ireland.

Ireland is a place which must have so great an Army kept up in it, as may make the Irish desist from doing themselves or the English harm by their future Rebellions

For the oppressed Protestants in Ireland.

Never get mixed up in a Welsh wrangle. It doesn't end in blows like an Irish one, but goes on forever.