Quotes & Sayings About What It Means To Be Irish

The ultimate goal of the political elite is to privatize the air. So as not to destroy their own edifice of democratic compassion they will make provisions for the sick and the poor. Air will be rationed by a privatized bureaucracy and only those who complete a series of stringent means tests will be allowed to breath freely. If this sounds like untenable dystopian sci-fi, you haven't been paying attention. In the 17th century Dean Jonathon Swift satirically proposed that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. Many Lords in Westminster at the time took this as a sign that an Irish voice was finally speaking sense. The descendants of these Lords still stalk the corridors of power today. Never underestimate the callousness or the hereditary madness of the ruling class. — Dean Cavanagh

I'm hugely proud of being Irish. And I don't even know what that means. I just know that it's true. — Domhnall Gleeson

My people - before I was changed - they exchanged this as a sign of devotion. It's a Claddagh ring. The hands represent friendship; the crown represents loyalty ... and the heart ... Well, you know ... Wear it with the heart pointing towards you. It means you belong to somebody. Like this. — Joss Whedon

I don't think Ireland has ever had a genius for the novel. Of course, there were plenty of Irish novels, but I don't think that was ever the natural means of expression for the Irish. — Lady Gregory

I say "on principle" [regarding 'lesbian writer'] because whenever you get one of your minority labels applied, like "Irish Writer," "Canadian Writer," "Woman Writer," "Lesbian Writer" - any of those categories - you always slightly wince because you're afraid that people will think that means you're only going to write about Canada or Ireland, you know. — Emma Donoghue

The Irishman frees himself from slavery when he realizes the truth that the capitalist system is the most foreign thing in Ireland. The Irish question is a social question. The whole age-long fight of the Irish people against their oppressors resolves itself in the last analysis into a fight for the mastery of the means of life, the sources of production, in Ireland. Who would own and control the land? The people, or the invaders; and if the invaders, which set of them - the most recent swarm of land thieves, or the sons of the thieves of a former generation? — James Connolly

Being Irish means you belong to the clan. It's what you feel. They feel Irish. — Martin Naughton

You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American. — Russell Means

My name means freedom [in Irish]. — Saoirse Ronan

Kiana loved birds," Breena told him late one dusky evening. "When she was just a few summers old, she would run beneath them as they flew, her chubby arms stretched out as if tmo take flight alongside them." She sniffed and wrapped her arms around her stomach. "A few weeks before the attack, she told me that she was still going to fly one day. 'I look at the birds, and I see freedom,' she said. 'To soar above the hurt of the world, to be too high for the wars of men to touch you: that is what it means to fly. — Elizabeth Wilson

What a woman you are," he murmured, and she heard the emotion in it, the
way the Irish thickened just a bit in his voice. And saw it in those vivid eyes when he drew back. "That you would think of this. That you would do this."
He shook his head, kissed her. Like the breath, long and quiet.
"I can't thank you enough. There isn't enough thanks. I can't say what this means to me, even to you. I don't have the words for it." He took her hands,
brought them both to his lips. "A ghra. You stagger me."
He framed her face now, touched his lips to her brow. "You're the beat of my heart, the breath in my body, the light in my soul. — J.D. Robb

Growing up with Bronx Irish parents during an era of protests against the status quo, I was especially committed to doing the opposite of what I was told to do. Forty-four years later, I am left with only one means of making a living: comedy. — Greg Fitzsimmons

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

I'm Irish, so I'm messing all the time. Which means, I'm having a laugh. I'm always making jokes. — Saoirse Ronan

Everybody who has a baby thinks everybody who hasn't a baby ought to have a baby,
Which accounts for the success of such plays as the Irish Rose of Abie,
The idea apparently being that just by being fruitful
You are doing something beautiful,
Which if it is true
Means that the common housefly is several million times more beautiful than me or you. — Ogden Nash