James Connolly Quotes

I'm part of a party that I think values making sure that everyone in this country has an opportunity to succeed. That's why I'm a Democrat.

The cause of the rebellion [Irish Rebellion of 1641] was the desire of the Romanists to recover the Church Revenues, worth about 110,000 per annum, and of the common Irish to get back all the Englishmen's estates, and of the ten or twelve grandees to get the empire of the whole.

We will take up the ball of the Revolution where our fathers stopped it and roll it to the final consummation of freedom and independence for the masses.

The same effort that would get us Dominion Home Rule will get us a Republic.

Very significant. My mission is to pacify Ireland.

The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air—it is a right proclaimed by their very existence.

The Act by which most of us hold our estates was an Act of violence—an Act subverting the first principles of the Common Law in England and Ireland …. Every acre of land is held by title derived under the Act of Settlement …. Consider how far it may be prudent to pursue the successive claims of dignified and unequivocal independence made for Ireland by the right honorable gentlemen.

The Irish light as been extinguished by the foulest means that sword and tyranny ever practiced …. Any attempt to rekindle it is to be treated as sedition.

We will have no political future if we are not arrested.

It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand ... no method by which the communities could translate their desires for those individuals into provision for those individuals.

As the important contest, into which we have been driven, is now become interesting to every European state, and particularly affects the members of the British Empire, we think it our duty to address you on the subject. We are desirous, as is natural to injured innocence, of possessing the good opinion of the virtuous and humane. We are peculiarly desirous of furnishing you with a true state of our motives and objects; the better to enable you to judge of our conduct with accuracy, and determine the merits of the controversy with impartiality and precision.

A great revolution ... must ... be productive of hazard, vicissitudes, and perhaps calamity. But the question is for you, whether or no it is not worth while to pass through the ordeal of temporary suffering to establish permanent liberty.

Ireland was almost constantly agitated by rebellions and insurrections, which, although not always taking their rise from the difference of religious opinions, between the English and Irish, were aggravated and rendered more bitter and irreconcilable from that cause.

It is then a very unseasonable time to plead law, when swords are in the hands of the vulgare, or to think to restrain them with fear of punishments when they look after liberty and shake off all government.

The supreme test of a democracy is the measure of equality of opportunity that it affords to its citizens to rise to the highest point of authority and position.

In a country where there is no privileged class, genius and industry may attain the highest honors.

As a purely British organization, the Blackshirts will respect those principles of tolerance which are traditional in British politics. They have no prejudice either of class or race. Their recruits are drawn from all social grades and every political party. Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King's Road, Chelsea, London, S.W.

The position of what is generally called great people has of late become extremely difficult. They are more attacked and calumniated, and judged with less indulgence than private individuals. What they have lost in this way, they have not by any means regained in any other. Ever since the revolution of 1790 they are much less secure than they used to be, and the transition from sovereign power to absolute want has been as frequent as sudden.

Fellow citizens: The hour to try your souls and to redeem your pledges has arrived. Stand together in face of the brutal, cowardly enemies of your race! Bring English tyranny to its knees. Pay no rent under any pretext! The government, with its bayonets, will learn in a single Winter how powerless are armed forces against the will of a united determined, and self-reliant nation.

A more mischievous idea cannot exist, than that any degree of wickedness, violence, and oppression may prevail in a country, that the most abominable, murderous, and exterminating rebellions may rage in it, or the most atrocious and bloody tyranny may domineer, and that no neighboring power can take cognizance of either, or afford succor to the miserable sufferers.

In all the great wars of England, the war of the American Revolution, the war against the French Revolution, the Crimean War,, there were men who stood out against those ventures, and against a nation lashed to madness by the appeals and lies of its leaders. They were but a miserable minority, but history has triumphantly vindicated them.

Aggressive land reform would be far less destabilizing than a violent revolt.

A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune. and the force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated. but the difficulties of established prejudice: the man dies, but his memory lives

The great object of my life has been the independence of my country; for that I have sacrificed everything that is most dear to man…. The connection with England has been her bane.

We intend, Citizen General, to restore to a people ripe for revolution, the independence and liberty for which it clamors. Ireland has groaned under the hateful yoke of England for centuries. The Defenders … are already secretly armed…. Detach Ireland from England, and she will be reduced to a second-rate power.