diplomats-of-ireland

"The Holy See encourages the peaceful resolution of disputes. So the Holy See is a voice of conscience that we want to relate to at a diplomatic level. Also, the Holy See is a great source of insight on particular situations if you want to understand what's happening in certain parts of the world. The Holy See, because of the presence of the Church on the ground, often has a particularly fine understanding."

"The EU sees the Holy See as a promoter of justice in the world and a defender of human rights. My sense is that the Holy See views the EU as a zone of stability and as a stabilising force in an increasingly fractured international landscape."

"Even if we were to be able to cancel St Patrick's Day in Ireland, which of course is ridiculous, and we never would, it would still continue around the world."

"We are not seeing 90 percent of people going to Mass on Sundays as they did in the past. Perhaps what we are seeing today is a more honest representation of peoples' true faith. I think maybe a lot of it in the past was social convention."

"Ireland and the Holy See are both firm believers in the need for effective multilateral cooperation among nations to face global challenges. We are believers in a peaceful rules-based world and in the power of dialogue. Our long-standing relationship takes in many global issues of mutual interest, including human rights, sustainable development, eradicating hunger, climate change, disarmament, migration and human trafficking, freedom of religion or belief, and peaceful resolution of conflicts."

"When we speak of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English."

"If we allow one of the finest and the richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four million Irishmen, to die out without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace, and a blighting stigma upon our nationality."

"The Gaelic League is founded not upon hatred of England, but upon love of Ireland. Hatred is a negative passion; it is powerful - a very powerful destroyer; but it is useless for building up. Love, on the other hand, is like faith; it can move mountains, and faith, we have mountains to move."

"My aim was to save the Irish language from death - it was dying then as fast as ever it could died - and that ambition did not lend itself to English writing except for propaganda purposes ..."

"I do not think there is much to add to what I have said here, except to observe that it is a national duty - I had almost said a moral one - for all those who speak Irish to speak it to their children also, and to take care that the growing generation shall know it as well as themselves: and in general, that it is the duty of all Irish-speakers to use their own language amongst themselves, and on all possible occasions, except where it will not run. For, if we allow one of the finest and richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four million Irishmen, to die out without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace and a blighting stigma upon our nationality."

"Skorzeny, who is now stateless, resides in Spain. I see no objection to granting a visa. Of course, if the Skorzenys come here there may be some adverse comment in the English popular press but I think we should be prepared to endure that with fortitude."

"Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it. On that definition Swift is more Irish than Goldsmith or Sheridan, although by the usual tests they are Irish and he is pure English."

"We taught our young people hatred of England. We taught them that the Six Counties were rightfully ours: that is, that they should be ruled by Catholics."

"I expected a lot of negative reactions to my critique of aspects of Irish nationalism, and I got a fiercely negative set of reactions of course from sympathisers with Sinn Féin and the IRA, that is to say, people who are so nationalist they were prepared to kill for nationalist objectives."

"There were other fellow-sufferers, lower-case ones: the thousands who were either killed, maimed or bereaved by the devotees of the Irish Republic in Mr Sands's organization, the Provisional IRA. Those other dead, however, being the wrong kind, are implicitly excluded from what is seen as a celestial tête-à-tête."

"Of history and its consequences it may be said: "Those who can, gloat; those who can't, brood." Englishmen are born gloaters; Irishmen born brooders."

"Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation."

"If I saw Mr. Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads, with a stake driven through his heart – politically speaking – I should continue to wear a clove of garlic round my neck, just in case."

"The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail. If there is something you are expected to do, but don't want to do, or even have done for you, you can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down."

"I think many non-Jews don't realise the tremendous emotional heat that is involved here in the second half of the twentieth century. A heat that derives from the Holocaust. That is to say the destruction, the mass murder of the Jews in Eastern Europe where most of the Jews were. That both the Israelis and the Jews of the United States are the bereaved children of that population who were murdered. And the bond between the Jews of the United States and the people of Israel has the emotional intensity derived from that common bereavement. And that is what gives. I do understand that people resent the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country [the US], but that power derives from that elemental basic bond of the common bereavement and the horror that is there in the background. Therefore, Jews in the United States do react strongly – and that's what makes this a very powerful lobby, and it is – they do react strongly to anything that seems to them to threaten the connection of the United States in Israel, which is Israel's lifeline. They see this as threatening. This may be an exaggerated fear, but always there is the shadow there of a possible new Holocaust. Israel overrun. The people of Israel massacred again."