Irish Identity Quotes

I carry the flag of Ireland all the time. I want to represent my country.

Give Ireland back to the Irish, don't make them have to take it away.

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

I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland.

Make-believe has so long held sway that truth arrives on the scene with all the aspect of an ogre. As a consequence, the real history of their country is a sealed book to the vast majority of the Irish. They neither ask for it nor is it given them.

I'm Irish. That means I'm Catholic. But, truth is, now I'm a retired Christian.

Stop at home. Arm for Ireland. Fight for Ireland and no other land.

The British minister mistakes the Irish character. Had he intended to make Ireland a slave, he should have kept her a beggar. There is no middle policy … greatly emancipate or fundamentally destroy.

Advance the cause of Ireland’s national independence by … the discontinuance of anything tending towards the Anglicization of Ireland … The development of an Irish foreign policy.

I'm Irish and I was born on St. Patrick's Day. I'm lucky sevens.

Ireland has remained a Catholic nation, and as such sets the eternal destiny of man high above the isms and idols of the day. Her people would accept no system that decried of imperiled that destiny. So long as that was their attitude none of the forms of state-worship now prevalent [elsewhere in the world] could flourish in their land.

I'm Irish. We think sideways

The Irish are the damnedest race. They put so much emphasis on so many wrong things.

I can't feel Irish to save my soul, but it's a fact.

Inherently in us as Irish people, wherever you are in the world, when you hear an Irish accent, it's like a moth to a flame. There's a real personable pride and camaraderie about being Irish.

It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.

I'm from an Irish Catholic family.

I come from a long line of staunch Irish Catholics.

Dublin's a great place. It really is. It's a great place. And Ireland, especially, is a great place. I've realized that growing up more. I'm loving my country more as I'm getting older.

Every publisher or agent I've ever met told me the same thing - that Irish readers don't want to read about the bad old days of the Troubles; neither do the English and Americans - they only want to read about the Ireland of The Quiet Man, when red-haired widows are riding bicycles and everyone else is on a horse.

On my mum Marie's side, my nana was from the Republic of Ireland, and my granddad was from the north. Lots of families in Manchester have strong Irish connections, but it never occurred to me to play for anyone other than England.

The glory of the old Irish nation, which in our hour will grow young and strong again. Should we fail, the country will not be worth more than it is now. The sword of famine is less sparing than the bayonet of the soldier.

Is there to be no living Irish nation?

What I've said before, only half in joke, is that everybody in Ireland is famous. Or, maybe better, say everybody is familiar.

My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: 'If she writes anything else, do let us know.' Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed.