Irish Potato Quotes & Sayings

Those who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land." — Cornel West

True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.
Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election. — Edward Rutherfurd

In the 1930s, the Nazis borrowed the frugal image of the one-pot meal, putting it to ideological use. In 1933, Hitler's government announced that Germans should put aside one Sunday, from October to March, to eat a one-pot meal: Eintopf. The idea was that people would save enough money in this way to donate whatever was saved to the poor. Cookbooks were hastily rewritten to take account of the new policy. One recipe collection listed no fewer than sixty-nine Eintopfs, including macaroni, goulash, Irish stew, Serbian rice soup, numerous cabbagey medleys, and Old German potato soup. — Bee Wilson

Food cost rather than the absolute absence of food can often be the key factor in shortages and possible starvation. During the height of the Irish Potato Famine in 1845, Ireland was actually exporting food to England. The peasants starved because they could not afford to buy food at the local prices, enhanced by the loss of the potato crop. There was enough food, in absolute terms, to keep everyone alive; they died because they had no money to buy it. — Peter Wadhams

In a move that will remain in Irish annals as a stigma comparable to the potato famine, the Dublin government succumbed to ECB blackmail: make the German creditors of Ireland's commercial banks whole, even a bank that was closed down and thus no longer systemically important for Ireland's financial sector, or else. — Yanis Varoufakis

What can I say? I'm Irish, I love a good potato. — Sophia Tallon

Irish people marry late, as a rule. We have that potato-famine DNA from the old country, that mentality where you don't give birth to anything until you have the potatoes all stored up to feed it. My ancestors were all shepherds who got married in their thirties and then stayed together for life, who had long and happy marriages, no doubt because they were already deaf. My grandparents courted for nine years before they married in 1933. — Rob Sheffield

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

The word 'vegetable' has no precise botanical meaning in reference to food plants, and we find that almost all parts of plants have been employed as vegetables - roots (carrot and beet), stems (Irish potato and asparagus), leaves (spinach and lettuce), leaf stalk (celery and Swiss chard), bracts (globe artichoke), flower stalks and buds (broccoli and cauliflower), fruits (tomato and squash), seeds (beans), and even the petals (Yucca and pumpkin). — Charles Heiser

Lord, you're Irish," said Will. "Can you make things that don't have potatoes in them? We had an Irish cook once when I was a boy. Potato pie, potato custard, potatoes with potato sauce ... — Cassandra Clare

Potatoes came to Europe from the New World in the early sixteenth century. Sir Francis Drake is thought to have introduced the potato to England, and shortly afterward Sir Walter Raleigh tried planting them on his Irish estates. When — Ryan Hackney

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

This is a nation of runaways. Every person comes from somewhere else. Even the Indians, they run once upon a time across the Alaskan land bridge. The blacks, they maybe didn't run from Africa, okay, but they ran from slavery. And the rest of us, we all ran from something. From the church, the state, the parents, the Irish potato bug. And I think this is why Americans are so restless. — Rebecca Makkai