Quotes from Tim Pat Coogan

From the very beginning and indeed prior to anybody going out I knew very well what to expect from the people in command in the U.S.A. However, the best not the worst must be made of them, and there is little doubt that eventually things will be all right.

Collins was willing to go to war, but as Griffith, de Valera and Figgis correctly divined, the public was not, and it would take several more months of repression and British policy blundering before the shooting of detectives and officials could be countenanced.

Policy calmly formulated in public-school accents behind closed doors can manifest itself in very raucous and savage proceedings when translated into action.

Truly the hills of Ireland could be levelled to the ground and all her children driven out upon the seas of the world before England can conquer us while we have such faith and courage.

the assistance given by the ordinary man and woman was simply marvellous and was responsible in the main for the success of our fighting services.

it was largely by military means that Lloyd George sought to proceed: nasty means at that. The British too had their 'squads'. Each side used the other's terminology: 'murder gangs'.

I remembered going to confession to a great priest, Father Moriarty of South William Street. I told him, "I shot a man, Father." "Did you think you were doing right? Had you no qualms about it?" he asked me. I told him I didn't have any qualms, I thought I was doing right, and he said, "Carry on with the good work," and gave me absolution.

John Mitchel's famous declaration that God sent the blight but the English created the Famine.

Redmond Howard, a politically aware witness to the Rising and a critic of the rebels, wrote in its aftermath: 'There never was, I believe, an Irish crime -- if crime it can be called -- which had not its roots in an English folly.

Even the reduced Six-County area which the unionists were now resignedly seeking to agree on for exclusion from Home Rule showed Sinn Fein majorities in two counties, Fermanagh and Tyrone.

Collins wrote to the Freeman, protesting at the slur on de Valera. But the gesture had no effect on the Great Adamantine. For although, as one of the pro-Treaty members of the Committee, Joseph McGuinness, said in the Dail afterwards, 'the people on this side literally went on their knees to President de Valera to try and preserve the unity of the country

This was a strong underlying sub-text to the entire meeting, how to destabilise the Northern state rather than how to work with it, an approach which Devlin and his spokesmen would certainly have been expected to explore more fully.

whenever I wanted to know what the Irish people wanted I had only to examine my own heart and it told me straight off what the Irish people wanted.

whenever I wanted to know what the Irish people wanted I had only to examine my own heart and it told me straight off what the Irish people wanted.' What an examination of his heart on this occasion told him was required was his re-election so that he could pick a new Cabinet and 'throw out that Treaty'.

very similar to his conduct at the Republican Convention in Chicago. There he was more concerned to show that he was the leader of Irish opinion than with the possible benefits to Ireland of the Cohalan-sponsored resolution.

his attitude towards the Treaty was similarly influenced by his determination to show that he, not Collins, was the real Irish leader. Hence the President's refusal to accept the Treaty even under the terms urged upon him by Sean T. O'Kelly.

he laughed and wept as a child does (and indeed as people in earlier centuries seem to have done) quite without self-consciousness.'25

One of the most irritating features of Mr de Valera's behaviour at this time was, having used every device of a practised politician to gain his point, having shown himself relentless and unscrupulous in taking every advantage of generous opponents, he would adopt a tone of injured innocence when his shots failed, and assume the pose of a simple, sensitive man, too guileless and gentle for this rough world of politics.108

We return a verdict of wilful murder against David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England; Lord French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Ian MacPherson, late Chief Secretary of Ireland; Acting Inspector General Smith of the RIC, Divisional Inspector Clayton of the RIC; DI Swanzy and some unknown members of the RIC.8

England has departed further from her own standards, and further from the standards even of any nation in the world, not excepting the Turk and Zulu, than has ever been known in history before.'9

Although a procedural agreement between the pro- and anti-Treaty sides before the debate had given the last word to Griffith, de Valera tried to have the final say by making a melodramatic declaration that the 'document would rise up in judgement

As he walked down the stairs to wait for his armoured car he tripped and his gun went off, an ill-omen.

Book of Job: 'There is a path which no fowl knoweth and which the eye of the vulture hath not seen.

But there is no doubt that in many other parts of the country, the land-hungry and predatory element which emerges from any revolution tried to take advantage of the times to seize what did not belong to it.