"I am against this Treaty not because I am a man of war but because I am a man of peace. I am against this Treaty because it will not end the centuries of conflict between the two nations of Great Britain and Ireland."

"All history is man's efforts to realise ideals."

"A Dhomhnall, I have to tell you, you are abolished."

"How could one argue with a man who was always drawing lines and circles to explain the position; who, one day, drew a diagram [here Michael illustrated with pen and paper] saying 'take a point A, draw a straight line to point B, now three-fourths of the way up the line take a point C. The straight line AB is the road to the Republic; C is where we have got to along the road, we cannot move any further along the straight road to our goal B; take a point out there, D [off the line AB]. Now if we bend the line a bit from C to D then we can bend it a little further, to another point E and if we can bend it to CE that will get us around Cathal Brugha which is what we want!' How could you talk to a man like that?"

"De Valera paused before replying to the suggestion. It had been his Karma to live a long and distinguished public life. Although he was then in his eighty-fifth year he was looking forward to a second seven-year term as President of Ireland. But he knew that before the bar of history his name and fame were inextricably linked with a man whose allotted span had been destined to be but a third of his own. He knew that the story of Eamon de Valera could not be told without that of Michael Collins. Already he had embarked on what he knew in his heart was a futile effort to influence the record for the benefit of posterity. His newspaper and political empires had published innumerable favourable articles, histories and recollections. And in the years ahead he planned to ensure that much more favourable comment and chronology would be collated and set down. He had fashioned a vigorous dialectic of de Valerism that would bulwark him against critical re-appraisal long into the future. But de Valera was a realist, a man whose doodlings on the back of documents took the form of mathematical symbols. He realised only too well that his party, his newspapers, his Constitution even, had grown out of his opposition to Michael Collins and the resultant civil war. He knew that eventually, in the truthful telling of history, two and two would make four. Torn between his own clarity of vision and the myths he had spun around himself, de Valera struggled painfully for words to express himself. Then he said, "I can't see my way to becoming Patron of the Michael Collins Foundation. It's my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense." He could be right."

"Mr. de Valera did stand up to the Church, where he thought the Church was wrong—about the Irish Republic. But on issues like divorce, contraception, obscene literature, there was no question of standing up to the Church because Mr. de Valera—a good Catholic, in the traditional sense, from rural Ireland—agreed with the Church on such matters."

"The reason it's on the rise is because probably the boom times are getting even more boomer."

"We can spit on Bertie Ahern till our mouths run dry, but he didn’t invent the amorality of our public culture. He was never a large enough figure to be able to shape the way Irish society thinks and feels. He was just an artful dodger, a skilled exploiter of the opportunities created by widespread tolerance for ingratiating chancers."

"Did Ahern, in his 11 years of power, make the most of this unprecedented prosperity for the public benefit? The answer can hardly be positive, given the present state of health, education and infrastructure, generally."

"He's the man. He's the best, the most skilful, the most devious, and the most cunning of them all."

"It took Ireland thirty years to become an overnight success."

"That decision will in history be written as the biggest mistake that American administration ever made, because Lehmans was a world investment bank. They had testicles everywhere."

"It is not correct, and if I said so, I was not correct — I cannot recall if I said it, but I did not say, or if I did, I did not mean to say it"

"It was a political donation for my personal use."

"Some people dye their hair yellow or put rings in their noses"

"governments can defer these things for a period and then, as they've previously done, go back and pay it all again. I mean, that's really only playing smokes and daggers with it."

"I continued the arrangement, so whatever was on my mind, and the reason I probably can't give you a better reflection of what I was doing on the 19th of January is because I didn't do it. I am sure there are some mornings you get up and you think I might do this or I might do that and then you don't do them so, its hard to remember."

"It is quite unacceptable that a member of Dáil Éireann and in particular a Cabinet Minister and Taoiseach, should be supported in his personal lifestyle by gifts made to him personally."

"The public are entitled to have an absolute guarantee of the financial probity and integrity of their elected representatives, their officials and above all of Ministers. They need to know that they are under financial obligations to nobody."

"I have always found him to be a proud, honourable man, loyal, true, persevering, principled, caring and committed but tough and a person who lost friends easily. On behalf of the Government but in particular on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party, I thank him for his distinguished years of service to his constituents and his country."

"I never condemn wrongdoing in any area"

"Time magazine reported him as speaking of "upsetting the apple tart"."

"I don't know how people who engage in that don't commit suicide"