Irish History Quotes

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

I would love to go back to any time in European history, especially in Irish history, to the second or third century, prior to the arrival of Christianity when Paganism flourished. I can always go back there in my imagination, of course. It doesn't cost anything, and it's a form of time travel, I suppose. ~ Gabriel Byrne

The Irish way of telling a story is a complex and elaborate one, complete with wild exaggerations, a certain delight in improbable fantasy, and a heightened sense of drama. ~ Rashers Tierney

The executed men were cursed, and praised, and doubted, and despised, and held to account, and blackened, and wondered at, and mourned, all in a confusion complicated infinitely by the site of war. ~ Sebastian Barry

The original Guinness Brewery in Dublin has a 9,000-year lease on its property at a perpetual rate of 45 pounds per year--one of the best bargains in Irish commercial history! ~ Rashers Tierney

Irish history having been forbidden in schools, has been, to a great extent, learned from Raftery's poems by the people of Mayo, where he was born, and of Galway, where he spent his later years. ~ Lady Gregory

I went further and further back through the centuries to get a sense of perspective but now at least I understand why Irish history evokes such strong passions and emotions. ~ James D'arcy

I felt that the IRA, in the context of Irish history, and Sinn Fein were a legitimate force that had to be recognized, and you wouldn't have peace without them. ~ Peter T. King

Cork-born Mother Jones was renowned as a dramatic orator who relished props, curses, and all kinds of attention-getting tactics--sound at all Irish to you? She exaggerated her age, referring to strikers not too much younger than herself as "my boys" and donning frumpish costumes to emphasize her "motherly appearance. ~ Rashers Tierney

Like a lot of Irish households we read a lot of Irish history. It was almost Soviet, raising the next generation with a mythic view of their history. ~ Fiona Shaw

On St. Patrick's Day, the traditional Irish family would rise early and find a solitary sprig of shamrock to put on their somber Sunday best. Then they'd spend the morning in church listening to sermons about how thankful they should be that St. Patrick saved such a bunch of ungrateful sinners. Nobody wore green clothing as it was considered an unlucky color not suitable for church. ~ Rashers Tierney

Mam drove the same way she walked, freestyle, also known as bumpily. She didn't really go in for right- and left-hand lanes, which was fine this side of Faha where the road is cart-wide and Mohawked with a raised rib of grass and when two cars meet there is no hope of passing, someone has to throw back a left arm and reverse to the nearest gap or gate, which Faha folks do brilliantly, flooring the accelerator and racing in soft zigzag to where they have just been, defeating time and space both and making a nonsense of past and present, here and there. As any student of Irish history ancient and recent will know, we are a nation of magnificent reversers. ~ Niall Williams

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

For a tiny speck in the Atlantic, Ireland has made an outsize contribution to world literature. It's a legacy we can all be proud of, one that would take many pages (or indeed a whole library of books) to recount in full. ~ Rashers Tierney

He may seem the fool who has given his all, by the wise men of the world; but it was the apparent fools who changed the course of Irish history. ~ Patrick Pearse

The illicit Irish homemade spirit, poitin was frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which made its manufacture grave enough of a sin to require a bishop's absolution rather than that of the regular parish priest. Ah, the lengths the Irish will go to for "the demon drink! ~ Rashers Tierney

The typical Irish peasant ate about 10 pounds of potatoes each day and soon towered in physical size over their rural English equivalents who mainly ate bread. ~ Rashers Tierney

Chemical properties in the peat stop anything from rotting, so bogs are the "bank vaults" of Irish history, protecting whatever is put in them. A bog-cutter recently described finding a slab of butter, still edible after more than a hundred years. ~ Carmel McCaffrey

I am a war man in the day of war, but I am a peace man in the day of peace. ~ Michael Collins

Scarlett O'Hara's father, Thomas, is an Irish immigrant who names his plantation Tara, after the home of the High Kings in Ireland. In an appealing nod to the "luck of the Irish," we read that Thomas O'Hara won his lands in a card game! ~ Rashers Tierney

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

We create history by our observation, rather than history creating us. ~ Stephen Hawking

It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them. ~ Henry David Thoreau

In Ireland, it's been like U2 and The Cranberries, which is rock, but you know they're Irish. ~ Caroline Corr

The story of evolution is more dramatic, more compelling, more intricate than any creation myth. Yet like any creation myth, it is a tale of transformations, of sudden and spectacular changes, eruptions of innovation that transfigured our planet, overwriting past revolutions with new layers of complexity. The tranquil beauty of our planet from space belies the real history of this place, full of strife and ingenuity and change. How ironic that our own petty squabbles reflect our planet's turbulent past, and that we alone, despoilers of the Earth, can rise above it to see the beautiful unity of the whole. ~ Nick Lane

Personally, I can't see the appeal in trekking down to D.C. for a networking extravaganza, even if it is built around a special moment in American history. While I find the election of Barack Obama inspirational, I don't have a desire to memorialize it with overly effusive celebration. ~ Jamie Johnson

All truth-seekers should study the genocide that was the Holocaust and ask themselves how on Earth this event was 'allowed' to occur, keeping in mind allowed is the correct term as there was no shortage of witnesses, including those all over Europe who stood by and did nothing to intervene. If those bystanders hadn't just stood by, perhaps the history books would tell a different story. ~ James Morcan

Plays by people like Martin McDonagh and Brian Friel attract huge audiences, not because they're Irish, but because they're brilliant plays. ~ Garry Hynes

They say there are only two kinds of people on St. Patrick's Day: the Irish, and the people that drive them home. ~ Conan O'Brien

It is never too late to revive your origins. It is their destiny: since they were not the first to be in on history, they will be the first to immortalize everything by reconstitution (by putting things in museums, they can match in an instant the fossilization process nature took millions of years to complete). But the conceptions Americans have of the museum is much wider than our own. To them, everything is worthy of protection, embalming, restoration. Everything can have a second birth, the eternal birth of the simulacrum. ~ Jean Baudrillard

You are to make up your mind whether it is to be God or man. Whether you are to be free or a slave. Whether it is to be progress or stagnation.

As long as man loves a phantom in the sky more than he loves his fellow man, there will never be peace upon this earth; so long as man worships a Tyrant as the "Fatherhood of God," there will never be a "Brotherhood of Man."

You must make the choice, you must come to the decision. Is it to be God or Man? Churches or Homes - preparation for death or happiness for the living?

If ever man needed an example of the benefit of the one against the other, he need but read the pages of history for proof of how religion retarded progress and provoked hatred among the children of men.

When theology ruled the world, man was a slave. The people lived in huts and hovels. They were clad in rags and skins; they devoured crusts and gnawed bones; the priests wore garments of silk and satin; carried mitres of gold and precious stones, robbed the poor and lived upon the fat of the land!

Here and there a brave man appeared to question their authority. These martyrs to intellectual emancipation slowly and painfully broke the spell of superstition and ushered in the Age of Reason and the Dawn of Science.

Man became the only god that man can know.
He no longer fell upon his knees in fear.
He began to enjoy the fruits of his own labor.

He discovered a way to relieve himself ~ Joseph Lewis

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so. ~ Adolf Hitler

The Grateful Dead did not play in sets; no eight numbers to a set, then a twenty-five-minute break, and so on, four or five sets and then the close-out. The Dead might play one number for five minutes or thirty minutes. Who kept time? Who could keep time, with history cut up in slices. The Dead could get just as stoned as anyone else. The ... non-attuned would look about and here would be all manner of heads, including those running the show, the Pranksters, stroked out against the walls like slices of Jello. Waiting; with nobody looking very likely to start it back up. Those who didn't care to wait would tend to drift off, stoned or otherwise, and the Test would settle down to the pudding. ~ Tom Wolfe

My history is really playing live - not writing or recording. ~ Tom Jenkinson

Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful" - Abu Bak's warfare rules, to his army ~ Firas Alkhateeb

Gideon isn't for sale mister.

Ah, yes. Like the Louisana Purchase, or Manhattan. I see. Should I have come with a purse full of beads and a wagon of diseased blankets? ... Can't you smell the history in the air? No doubt their grandfathers rushed across these prairies in their wagons, knocking down the natives, smashing in their brains in their zeal to stake for their claim. That pioneer spirit. My, what a land! I have learned so much from you ~ Libba Bray

I felt sure…that these creatures were never threatened by the grimness of history, either. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

Women well understood how to restrict birth through timing of sexual intercourse, herbs and abortifacients. I suspect the focus on men's control of women as the means of reproduction came later, in the last five percent or so of human history, with the idea of children as property and labor. One needed to have as many as possible, never mind about women's health or mobility or brainpower. Women's freedom was restricted in order to make sure of the paternity and ownership of children. ~ Gloria Steinem

Irish and English are so widely separated in their mode of expression that nothing like a literal rendering from one language to the other is possible. ~ Robin Flower

So the reason for our cleanliness becomes apparent; cleanliness is a form of apprehension; our faulty racial memory is fathered by fear. Destiny and history are untidy; we fear memory of that disorder. ~ Djuna Barnes

You're Professor Mills? The new one who teaches history?
As opposed to the old Professor Mills who preached overthrow of the government? ~ Josh Lanyon

Throughout our history human beings have conducted and practiced all kinds of rituals and activities with the motivation of obtaining peace. We have fought wars in the name of achieving peace because we are under the illusion that peace is something external, something to be obtained. ~ Saunsea

Written and directed by French showman Georges Melies, 'Le Voyage' features one of the most indelible images in cinema history: the wounded Man in the Moon bleeding like a particularly runny Brie, grimacing in pain with a space capsule protruding from his right eye. ~ Kage Baker

Whilst no people appears in history without the sign and palladium of a positive faith, without temple, altar, priesthood
that is to say, without a constituted religion
unbelief appears only under an individual form, sometimes proscribed, sometimes tolerated, seldom powerful, and never becoming established as the public and social expression of a nation. ~ Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

And even though we have read all the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, we shall never become philosophers if we are unable to make a sound judgement on matters which come up for discussion; in this case what we would seem to have learnt would not be science but history. ~ Rene Descartes

Those who read the Scriptures as magnificent literature, breath-taking poetry, or history and overlook the story of salvation miss the Bible's real meaning and message. ~ Billy Graham

I don't sit down in front of my computer screen and think, 'Right. Today I shall begin a story set in this or that period of history.' I just get ideas from the world around me. ~ Ann Turner

Our lives drifts along with normal things happening. Some ups, some downs, but nothing to go down in history about. Nothing so fantastic or terrible that it'll be told for a thousand years.
"But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none."
That's why people invent fights. That's why we're drawn to sports. That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.
We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale. ~ Derek Sivers

...I do write books that are female oriented. In my books, the female characters are always searching for something and they often find it, and what they find is themselves and their own strength. I want girls to understand there has been a long history of strong women... Women have always been oppressed but managed to see their own way, and there is a long tradition of females doing what they want to do, and that's what girls can do. They can have selves of their own, a definition of themselves.'" ~Virginia Hamilton in Shireen Dodson's the Mother-Daughter Book Club ~ Shireen Dodson

I find historical figures in general very tricky because you feel at times that you're serving two masters. Not only the arc and wonderful writing that comes with the show, but also the history of a person's life. ~ Vincent Piazza

Unlike any other organism in history, humans have a mind-body conflict: we have a body built for performance, but a brain that's always looking for efficiency. ~ Christopher McDougall

I often noticed that the surrounding mountains inspired Hitler. He once joked that here he stood 'above the world' in an environment comparable to Olympius, legendary mount of the gods, but that alone can never have been the motivation for himto put down his private roots on Obersalzberg. ~ Heinz Linge

History shows how feeble are barriers of paper. ~ John Lothrop Motley

God cautions us in Isaiah 55:9 that his ways are not ours and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts (undoubtedly one of the grander understatements).
God is warning us that he is not logical and that believing him to be logical will lead to all kinds of disappointment.
Logic has been defined as 'the science or history of the human mind, as it traces the progress of our knowledge from our first conceptions through their different combinations, and the numerous deductions that result from comparing them with one another.'
Doesn't sound much like God. Yet, we so often strain our relatively minuscule brains to conceive, combine, compare, and deduce. Then we fault God when his conclusions disagree.
The repetition of this useless exercise leads to a form of insanity which ultimately manifests in denial of the existence of such an illogical God. ~ Ron Brackin

But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past
or more accurately, pastness
is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15
" ... But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153
Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) ~ Michel-Rolph Trouillot

It occurs to me to wonder: do I believe in any god, or even positively not believe, as James does? I believe in systems and methods. I believe in the beauties of philosophy and poetry. I believe that the work we do and leave behind us is our afterlife; and I believe that history lies, but sometimes so well that I can't bring myself to resent it. I believe that truth is beauty, but not, I'm afraid, the reverse. It doesn't seem sufficient to sustain one in life's rigorous moments. Perhaps I shall embrace Islam. Its standards for poetry seem very high. ~ Emma Bull

You've probably played that parlor game in which you fantasize about what it would be like to have a drink with one of the great figures in history. Perhaps ~ Robert Wachter

The young man never seemed to know what idleness was," marveled Cutler, "and every leisure moment would find the last novel, some English classic or some abstruse book on natural history in his hands. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

The only thing that's really new is the history you don't know. ~ Harry Truman

I know he's had his problems in the past…
"He can't keep his hands off a liquor bottle at the best of times, and he still hasn't accepted the loss of his wife!"
"I sent him to a therapist over in Baltimore," she continued. "He's narrowed his habit down to a six-pack of beer on Saturdays."
"What does he get for a reward?" he asked insolently.
She sighed irritably. "Nobody suits you! You don't even like poor old lonely Senator Holden."
"Like him? Holden?" he asked, aghast. "Good God, he's the one man in Congress I'd like to burn at the stake! I'd furnish the wood and the matches!"
"You and Leta," she said, shaking her head. "Now, listen carefully. The Lakota didn't burn people at the stake," she said firmly. She went on to explain who did, and how, and why.
He searched her enthusiastic eyes. "You really do love Native American history, don't you?"
She nodded. "The way your ancestors lived for thousands of years was so logical. They honored the man in the tribe who was the poorest, because he gave away more than the others did. They shared everything. They gave gifts, even to the point of bankrupting themselves. They never hit a little child to discipline it. They accepted even the most blatant differences in people without condemning them." She glanced at Tate and found him watching her. She smiled self-consciously. "I like your way better."
"Most whites never come close to understanding us, no matter how hard they try."
"I had ~ Diana Palmer