Politics is the chloroform of the Irish people, or rather the hashish.

If a queen bee were crossed with a Friesian bull, would not the land flow with milk and honey?

Politics is the chloroform of the Irish people, or rather the hashish.

My mother is Irish, my father is black and Venezuelan, and me - I'm tan, I guess.

It has to do with the fact that Ford, for all his greatness, is an Irish egomaniac, as anyone who knows him will say.

The best thanks we could offer those who went before and raised the Irish working class from their knees was to press forward with determination and enthusiasm towards the ultimate goal of their efforts, a Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland.

I'm Irish. I think about death all the time.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

Our fifty principal cities contain 39.3 per cent of our entire German population, and 45.8 per cent of the Irish. Our ten larger cities only nine per cent of the entire population, but 23 per cent of the foreign.

Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history.

I think the Irish woman was freed from slavery by bingo. They can go out now, dressed up, with their handbags and have a drink and play bingo. And they deserve it.

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.

The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.

Well I think that's probably one of a few, where I grew up in the City of New York, it's got a lot of energy, my parents are Irish-American so there was a bit of yelling going on in my house but it seemed normal.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

You think the Welsh are friendly, but the Irish are fabulous.

In 1953 there were two ways for an Irish Catholic boy to impress his parents: become a priest or attend Notre Dame.

The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scotts as a joke, but the Scotts haven't seen the joke yet.

For a man to come right out and say he does not believe in the Old Testament, I think many Catholics across the nation as well as the world are offended by Bill O'Reilly claiming he's an Irish Catholic.

I suffer from Irish-Catholic guilt. Guilt is a good reality check. It keeps that 'do what makes you happy' thing in check.

To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have.

You think that religion is a thing that is there to help you and to see you through life, and then you wake up one morning and find the entire Irish situation, the civil war that's based on religion.

I'm just a true Irish boy at heart.

I grew up in a big Irish, Catholic family. My dad was a pretty rough guy. So one of my brothers left home when he was 15 and found his way to the gym. It gave me the opportunity to go and spend some time with him and work out in the gym.

A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano.

Yancy is actually a Native-American name, but I'm Irish. Go figure.

My first thought when I came here was that I understood why there are so many great Irish writers - because there is something mystical in the air. There's always this cloudy, moody sky and it's challenging.

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

I printed a list of Irish names from the Internet and my husband, Dave, saw Finley on the list. I really liked it but didn't want to scare Dave off with my enthusiasm. So I used a little reverse psychology and let him think it was his idea.

The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill.

People do think I'm Jewish. But we're Irish Catholic. My father had a brogue.

Humor has historically been tied to the mores of the day. The Yellow Kid was predicated on what people thought was funny about the immigrant Irish. When you're different in a society, you're funny.

The Irish Republican Army has kept every commitment made by its leadership.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.

Theatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French.

I've had Irish skin from the time I was a young girl.

Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart.

The Irish job was something that had to be sorted out.

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.

Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?

That's what the holidays are for - for one person to tell the stories and another to dispute them. Isn't that the Irish way?

I wrote a script. I actually enjoyed writing it more than acting. It's about the Irish rebellion of 1920, which is a fascinating period and place for me.

The Irish Government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.

I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead.

Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.

I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.