The Quotable Irish

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

When I get a very generous introduction like that, I explain that I’m
emotionally moved, but on the other hand I’m Irish and the Irish are
very emotionally moved. My mother is Irish and she cries during beer
commercials.
– Former U.S. General Barry McCaffrey

Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth
century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the
twentieth century.
– Author John McGahern

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

Well, it takes all kinds of men to build a railroad.
No sir, just us Irish.

– Railroad barons in “Dodge City,” Warner Bros., 1939
Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and
no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or
worse.
– George Bernard Shaw