Potato Famine Quotes

The famine has been sent by God to teach the Irish a lesson.... The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.

That million and a half of men, women, and children were carefully, prudently, and peacefully slain by the English Government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance which their own hands created; and it is quite immaterial to distinguish those who perished in the agonies of famine itself from those who died by typhus fever, which in Ireland is always caused by famine. Further, this was strictly an artificial famine-that is to say, it was a famine which desolated a rich and fertile island that produced every year abundance and superabundance to sustain all her people and many more. The English, indeed, call that famine a dispensation of Providence, and ascribe it entirely to the blight of the potatoes. But potatoes failed in like manner all over Europe, yet there was no famine save in Ireland. The British account of the matter, then, is first a fraud; second, a blasphemy. The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine.

The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine.

Numbers of starving Catholics had gone to Protestant clergymen and offered to become converts in return for food, and when some of these sickened with the fever, the priests declared it was a judgment on them, and religious hostility became intensified.

Ireland has never recovered from Britain's nineteenth century "free trade" rule.

England seizes our food whilst death seizes on our people.

Men can reason themselves into almost any sort of opinion if they are so inclined.

Whole families used to starve in their cabins without their plight being discovered until the stench of their decaying corpses attracted notice.

We've always talked about doing something else and Campbell Scott is always busy and I'm always busy. But when we came up with the idea of doing the potato famine as a hip hop musical, I wanted somebody who was going to bring gravity.

The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage.

Keynes's contribution was not just to advocate spending government money in the middle of a recession. Every government had done that going back to the days of the Irish potato famine. What he gave to us was a way of thinking about the magnitude and the dimensions and so forth.

‘Give us food or we perish’, is now the loudest cry that is heard in this unfortunate country. It is heard in every corner of the Island …. It is a strange popular cry to be heard within the limits of the powerful and wealthy British Empire…. Russia wants liberty, Prussia wants a constitution, Switzerland wants religion, Spain wants a king. Ireland alone wants food.

The whole district seemed swept of food and a third of the population would be without food at Christmas, two thirds starving before February and by May 1848, there would be a total starvation.

I have often been asked, 'How is it that Ireland could formerly support a population of eight millions as compared with only five now?’ The answer is simple: Eight millions could still exist if the potato crop were a certainty, and if the people were now content to exist as they did then. But to the then existing population-living at best in a light-hearted and hopeful, hand-to-mouth contentment-there was a terrible awakening.

No agitation for political reforms could be carried on by a plague-stricken and starving people. Food was what they needed and most urgently demanded. The political argument died away, drowned in cries and petitions for relief, lost in weepings and wailings for the victims who were perishing in hundreds by the roadsides, in the fields, and in their bare and empty houses.

Dependence on Charity is not to be made an agreeable mode of life.

We stop the Press with very great regret to announce that the Potato Murrain has unequivocally declared itself in Ireland. The crops about Dublin are suddenly perishing…. Where will Ireland be in the event of a universal potato rot?

Ireland is a country peopled by peasants, priests and pixies.

Some superstition … prevented even the children from eating the myriads of blackberries which ripened on the bushes .

… the time is come when a removal of the restrictions upon the importation of food cannot be successfully resisted. Should this be Sir Robert's own opinion, the Queen very much hopes that none of his colleagues will prevent him from doing what it is right to do.

The whole British argument in the [Irish potato] famine was that the poor are poor because of a character defect. It’s a dangerous, mean-spirited. Tired argument.

The very great poverty of the Fishermen arises from the want of markets or other demand for fish. The Fishermen often see the creeks along the West Coast crammed with fine fish, when they could take tons of them at a haul, or shot, with a deep seine or drift net, but when caught they would be useless to them, as they could not either salt or sell them …. From the loss of the potatoes as a certain means of subsistence, the fishermen would give their undivided time to the Fisheries, instead of losing the best seasons by wasting their labor on a high-rented potato garden. They would thus throw an immense quantity of cured food such as Hake, Cod

My great, great grandfather, Michael O'Hanson, fled the impending potato famine of Ireland and arrived in America in the early 1840s with his bride, Bridget. They headed for Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and a mecca for Irish-Catholic immigrants then.

Both sides of my family had come from Ireland in the 19th century for the same reason: There was nothing to eat over there. Since then, I've tried to make up for the potato famine by making the potato the only vegetable that passes these lips.

… half of the potatoes were ruined by the rot, and that no one could guarantee the remainder. Belgium, Holland, Sweden, and Denmark, in which states the potato disease had likewise deprived the poorer class of its usual food, have immediately taken energetic means, and have opened the harbours, bought corn, and provided[for the case of a rise of prices. Sir Robert proposed the same thing for England, and, by opening the ports, a preparation for the abolition of the Corn Laws. His colleagues refused …. The whole country cries out: the Corn Laws are doomed.