Quotes About History

the Irish... qualities are hidden, besmirched, by that what has been imposed upon us, just as the fine, splendid surface of Ireland is besmirched by our towns and villages

It was far from good enough for de Valera, Brugha and Stack.

The evidence, however, appears to be inescapable that, the civil war won

With Collins gone the major political personality left in the Free State was on the other side, de Valera.

a local priest, Canon Cohalan of Bandon, preached a famous sermon in which he thundered: 'The day Michael Collins was killed where was de Valera?

In Desmond Ryan's inspired phrase, there continued the 'long wrestle between ghosts and realities with all the stored-up spleens of five years flaming through the rhetoric'.

But they put up such a fight, particularly in Cork, Clare, Tipperary, Longford, Limerick and Mayo, that they tied up well over 50,000 troops and drove the RIC out of all but the most strongly fortified barracks in the larger towns.

In their judgement it is essential, now that the war is over, and the peace Conference has dealt with so many analogous questions in Europe, that the Government should make a sincere attempt to deal with the Irish question once and for all.

The second again precludes them from again attempting what has so often failed in the past, the establishment of a single parliament for all Ireland on the lines of the Home Rule Acts of 1886, 1893 and 1914.

On the one hand the Irish began to prove the truth of the assertion that successful revolutions are in fact no more than the kicking down of an already rotted door.

the British position was so untenable morally that they could not use their Army properly and were never able to put forth their full military might.

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.

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

Three Protestants were shot at Dunmanway and over the next week the latent sectarianism of centuries of ballads and of landlordism (described in Chapter 1) claimed a total of ten Protestant lives.

History has taught us over and over again that freedom is not free. When push comes to shove, the ultimate protectors of freedom and liberty are the brave men and women in our armed forces. Throughout our history, they've answered the call in bravery and sacrifice.

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." —William Faulkner

All water has been everywhere, Bekah. What flows from your faucet was once frozen inside a glacier, and squeezed by unimaginable pressures at the bottom of the deepest sea, and rippling in a lightless lake in a cavern no living thing has ever touched. Also, it has almost certainly been inside a dinosaur. All water is one water, and all water remembers the past.

What is that?" "It's a gazebo." Calred sounded amused. "Why would you want a structure like that? It's completely indefensible." "That's true. I can't think of a single time in history a gazebo withstood a siege.

I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.

My dad was a Communist Party member who fought for his country.

I know that my grandfather is 92 years old. And he has seen this country evolve in amazing ways. He looks at South Carolina and he says, wow, what an amazing state that we have the blessing to live within because of the evolution.

That's how it is with legends. The greater they sound, the more must've got left out.

I was reading a book... 'the history of glue' - I couldn't put it down.