-Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing,
For the love of one's country is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,
And it makes us all part of the patriot game.

-And if there is anything that makes it fitting that I, rather than some other, I rather than one of the grey-haired men who were young with him and shared in his labour and in his suffering, should speak here, it is perhaps that I may be taken as speaking on behalf of a new generation that has been re-baptised in the Fenian faith, and that has accepted the responsibility of carrying out the Fenian programme.

"These groups should listen to the voice of the people, as was witnessed here on Tuesday night, pack up and go away. We have now come to a point of no return. These people now have choices to make. These small groups have reached a fork in the road. For them the choice is clear, choose the peaceful and democratic road to a United Ireland - which is open to them - or they can choose to go down some sort of quasi-military cul-de-sac. There is no room for grey areas any longer." - Martin McGuinness on Dissidents

"no support, no strategy to achieve a United Ireland. Their intention is to bring British soldiers back onto the streets. They want to destroy the progress of recent times and to plunge Ireland back into conflict. Irish republicans and democrats have a duty to oppose this and to defend the peace process." -Gerry Adams on the RIRA

"No matter what the future may hold for the Irish nation, the seven years — 1916 to 1923 — must ever remain a period of absorbing interest. Not for over two hundred years has there been such a period of intense and sustained effort to regain the national sovereignty and independence." -Eamon De Valera

"If they may use their tanks and steel-armored cars, why should we hesitate to use the cover of stone walls and ditches? Why should the element of suprise be denied to us?" -Eamon De Valera

"The first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels," -Ernesto Guevara Lynch (Che Guevara's Father)

"It is the first rebellion that ever took place in Ireland where you had a majority on your side. It is the fruit of our life work. We have risked our lives a hundred times to bring about this result. We are held up to odium as traitors by those men who made this rebellion, and our lives have been in danger a hundred times during the last thirty years because we have endeavoured to reconcile the two things, and now you are washing out our whole life work in a sea of blood......Talk about the well-known high character of Sir John Maxwell—I confess that I never heard of him before in my life....I say I am proud of their courage, and, if you were not so dense and so stupid, as some of you English people are, you could have had these men fighting for you, and they are men worth having." -John Dillon, deputy leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, to the House of Commons, 11 May, 1916.

"We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English." -Winston Churchill

"Making peace, I have found, is much harder than making war." -Gerry Adams

At the Treaty negotiations in London, Lord Birkenhead remarked to Michael Collins:
"I may have just signed my political death-warrant", whereupon Collins replied, "I may have signed my actual death-warrant". Nine months later the 31-year-old Collins was killed by one of his former comrades and Ireland lost one of the most dedicated and talented leaders in its history.

"It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's simply that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody." -Brendan Behan

"It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer." -Inaugural speech of Cork Mayor Terence MacSwiney who died on hunger strike, October 25, 1920.

"If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed." -Padraig Pearse

"We die that the Irish nation may live, our blood will re-baptise and reinvigorate the old land. Knowing this, it is superfluous to say how happy I feel. I know now, what I have always felt, that the Irish nation can never die. Let our present-day place-hunters condemn our actions as they will, posterity will judge us aright from the effects of our actions." -Seán MacDiarmada

"If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!" -James Connolly

"Let no man write my epitaph... When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then shall my character be vindicated, then may my epitaph be written." -Robert Emmet

"Negotiating with de Valera.... is like trying to pick up mercury with a fork." -David Lloyd George ( to which de Valera replied, "Why doesn't he use a spoon?")

"Take a step forward lads - it'll be easier that way." -Robert Erskine Childers, last words, to his firing squad, Irish Civil War 1922