Irish Immigrant Quotes

In life, we all have a cross to bear and a unique story to tell. We just hope that someone will take the time to listen. ~ Greg McVicker

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

Nkechi never tried to hide her bottom. She was proud of it. Fascinating to me. Irish girls' lives were a constant quest for bottom-disguising or bottom-reducing clothing tactics. We can learn much from other cultures. ~ Marian Keyes

There, I was ridiculed for being an inauthentic American, and now I am being charged with being an inauthentic Russian. I do not yet understand that this very paradox is the true subject of so-called immigrant fiction. ~ Gary Shteyngart

There is this kind of sense in the immigrant community, first we were going to do immigration reform, but then 9/11 happened. ~ Luis Gutierrez

I am not in the business of pointing fingers or making excuses. However, recent history has shown that I, like thousands of others in Ireland, incorrectly relied upon the persons who guided Anglo and who wrongfully sought to portray a 'blue chip' Irish banking sector. ~ Sean Quinn

Jean-Marie Le Pen is a holocaust denier who was convicted and fined for dismissing Nazi concentration camps as a, quote, "Detail in History." But he kept running this anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, populist unapologetic xenophobic far right party in French politics. ~ Rachel Maddow

My mother was Irish and she was superstitious, if you'll forgive the tautology. ~ Rosalind Russell

Flaws are beautiful differences that have been wrongly considered. ~ Erin Forbes

People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.
Above all
we were wet. ~ Frank McCourt

Cause I'm Irish, and everyone remembers me. ~ Niall Horan

For my last meal, I'd want an Irish breakfast with soda bread and one of my dad's omelettes with three or four eggs. ~ Erin O'Connor

There was a love, but of the Irish kind, reserved and embarrassed by its own humanity. ~ Anne Griffin

Books, the children of the brain. ~ Jonathan Swift

What emerged for me as purpose was the search for and cultivation of possibilities for experiencing meaningful human transactions in different languages and across cultural differences through play, sports, travel, food, literature, and conversation. I sought to establish relations of mutual understanding and love with people no matter what their culture or place of origin in the world - relations based on philia, eros, and agape, according to context and persons. I perhaps sensed instinctively that such relations were the key to being equally at home everywhere, even in la Yunai. More than an immigrant, at that time I still felt myself to be a sojourner in this country, but I wanted my sojourn to be imbued with the meaning found in earnest, sincere connections with the people and places that life brought to my experience. ~ Daniel G. Campos

To the European immigrant - that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life - the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity. ~ Herbert Croly

It was in a stonecutter's house where I went to have a headstone made for Raftery's grave that I found a manuscript book of his poems, written out in the clear beautiful Irish characters. ~ Lady Gregory

I have been a foreigner all my life, first as a daughter of diplomats, then as a political refugee and now as an immigrant in the U.S. I have had to leave everything behind and start anew several times, and I have lost most of my extended family. ~ Isabel Allende

Thankfully the rest of the world assumed that the Irish were crazy, a theory that the Irish themselves did nothing to debunk. They had somehow got it into their heads that each fairy lugged around a pot of gold with him wherever he went. While it was true that LEP had a ransom fund, because of its officers' high-risk occupation, no human had ever taken a chunk of it yet. This didn't stop the Irish population in general from skulking around rainbows, hoping to win the supernatural lottery. ~ Eoin Colfer

I'm an Irish-American, and I grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood. ~ William Devane

Ireland is such an amazing country, and I have this little dream in the back of my head that someday I'll end up living there. When I've established myself in America and I don't need to live near the action, so to speak, and if you're good, the work will come to you. I feel very Irish; maybe that's why I've been so lucky with my career. ~ Anne Hathaway

Without artists, would this heritage have descended to us? Would the words and deeds - the revelation - have survived the arduous journey into the present without the painters, the mosaic workers, the storytellers, the stone carvers, the poets, the singers, the workers in stained glass? Wasn't it art, I thought - as I watched Bernard open a handsome black wallet and remove a handful of lire - that had been the carrier of the divine? Popes had understood that. The Emperor Constantine. Monks in damp Irish monasteries illuminating the Word. ~ Rachel Pastan

In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the price of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of freezing to death. ~ Upton Sinclair

His lightest touch brought joy, brought comfort and a sense of belonging. ~ Sharon Brubaker

I knew lots of Irish ladies in my life who would say daft things and then would just say something incredibly truthful in a very simple way with simple language - a few well chosen words that would take an intellectual five minutes to express. I like that. ~ Steve Coogan

As a practical matter, every immigrant needs to master English to be a full participating citizen and to have full economic opportunity. ~ Richard Lugar

All sorts of efforts were made to populate the Floridas - with anyone: Huguenots, Bermudians, Irish, Germans, Swiss, Scottish Highlanders, even some of the prostitutes being rehabilitated in London's Magdalen House. Sir Alexander Grant, who dreamed up the idea of transporting the prostitutes to Florida, confessed, with not exactly stunning insight, "Tis true they are not virgins"; nevertheless, he said, they would surely make splendid wives and mothers for such as were likely to live in a place like Florida.5 ~ Bernard Bailyn

intriguing, not standard Hollywood stuff. He was not a street kid who'd had to claw his way to respectability. His reasonably well-to-do family's roots traced back to George Washington's mother, and he was always proud of the fact that he was distantly related to "one of the founders of our country." Bill was Irish-English-German, "mixed in an American shaker," as he liked to say. His maternal grandfather was a cousin of Warren G. Harding, twenty-ninth president of the United States. Bill had been born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, on April 17, 1918. When he was three, the family moved to Pasadena, California. His father, William, was an industrial chemist; his mother, Mary, a teacher. He had two younger brothers, Robert (Bob) Westfield Beedle, and Richard (Dick Porter) Beedle. ~ Edward Z. Epstein

A man who leaves his wife is also a kind of immigrant. He rejects the home he's always known for another. Is it a surprise that Americans have the highest divorce rate in the world? If ditched lovers are also counted, then our rate of betrayal becomes truly stratospheric. To start over and advance or save ourselves, if only in our minds, we're willing to destroy everything. Soaked in a depthless, sampling culture, we're also expert at forgetting. Not only do we have no historical memory, but our personal past can be willfully and instantly erased, with hardly a ripple in its wake, and there's no one around, no community, to remind us of our shames. Extreme narcissists, we cling to bizarre narratives that allow us to make the most preposterous statements without flinching, or indulge in the most perverse and damaging behaviors. ~ Linh Dinh

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

It felt like the opening line to life's little joke: an immigrant with a law degree walks into a tire factory to work a blue-collar job in a small town. ~ Phuc Tran

A full night's sleep without money worries was a luxury. They were afraid to answer the door to strangers as they often could not pay the rent and had no TV license. They lived in fear of been brought to court for bad debts. They became master liars and a sarcastic tongue and cheeky nature were vital survival skills people learned in Wasteside. They pretended to officials at front doors they were child minders and they refused to accept or sign anything official or registered in case it was a summons ~ Annette J. Dunlea

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

One of my greatest sadnesses at the prospective break-up of the Union is that it will set English, Welsh and Northern Irish against Scots in a bitter division of the debts and resources of the whole of the U.K. ~ Rory Bremner

...there was always hunger in Ireland. She was a country that liked to be hurt. The Irish heaped coals of fire upon their own heads. They were unable to extinguish the fire. They were dependent,as always, on others. They had no notions of self-reliance. They burned and then poured empty buckets down upon themselves. It had always been so. ~ Colum McCann

I've never seen a nation more quick at finding joy in a sad situation than the Irish at a funeral. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

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

But let's just say, I'm Irish. I grew up in the 1950s. Religion had a very tight iron fist. ~ Liam Neeson

Every unskilled illegal immigrant who enters the United States for work drives up healthcare costs for every American. And, every illegal immigrant we turn a blind eye toward weakens the rule of law our country is founded on. ~ Elton Gallegly

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

Bridezellia was like General Patton she had an Operations Room, HQ established in her sitting room. Wall charts, to do lists, pictures, contact lists, mood charts, a calendar, list of dates and jobs were marked off with daily duties in her thick black diary. Her second in command was Saoirse, her local wedding planner. Nothing was going to be left to chance and nobody was going to ruin her prefect day. No expense was to be spared and fools were not suffered gladly. Raised voices were constantly heard in her phone calls to suppliers. Her personality changed and she became a hot head, losing her patience easily. Nobody entered her sitting room, the twilight zone without an invitation ~ Annette J. Dunlea

As they say, one thing led to another, and, ultimately, the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations, which ironically began six years ago this week. ~ George J. Mitchell

her real depths are Irish and romantic and illogical ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

The right, like Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbauggh, use women and the black man and the Hispanic immigrant and the gay man as a scapgoat for society's ills. They pretend it's about traditional family values, but that's a bullshit phrase that means nothing to me. They like to use us all. They use pro-life as a way to hate women and slam women, dressed up in the nobility of saving unborn fetuses. I think it's just misogyny. ~ Janeane Garofalo

* An Irish good-bye is when you leave a party or gathering without telling anyone. Highly recommended. ~ Sarah Knight

Irish poets, learn your trade,
sing whatever is well made,
scorn the sort now growing up
all out of shape from toe to top. ~ W.B.Yeats

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Earth, receive an honored guest; William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. ~ W. H. Auden

Ya game is fine, but ya booze-eyes are a problem. Not like ya ta drink this much. I reckon ya banjo'd, so ya are. ~ JoAnne Kenrick