Eamon de Valera Biography Quotes 19 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Eamon de Valera was born in New York City in 1882 to Catherine Coll, an Irish emigrant from County Limerick, and a father commonly recorded as Juan Vivion de Valera. After his father died, he was sent back to Ireland as a child and raised by his mothers family near Bruree, County Limerick. Gifted at mathematics and languages, he studied at Blackrock College and took a degree under the Royal University of Ireland. Before entering political life he was a mathematics teacher at several Dublin institutions, including Blackrock College, and he became deeply involved in the Gaelic revival through the Gaelic League. There he met Sinead Flanagan, a teacher, whom he married in 1910. His early years combined cultural nationalism with a rigorous, austere personal discipline that shaped his public persona.

From Volunteer to Rebel Commander
Drawn into advanced nationalism, de Valera joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913. During the Easter Rising of 1916 he commanded the 3rd Battalion at Bolands Mill, holding key routes in southeast Dublin. The Rising, led by figures such as Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, was thwarted after a week of fighting. De Valera was court-martialed and sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted, a decision influenced by circumstances including his American birth. Many leaders, including Pearse, Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett, were executed, and the executions shocked public opinion. De Valera was imprisoned at Frongoch and other prisons before his release in 1917. The experience, and the failed attempt by Eoin MacNeill to halt mobilization before the Rising, sharpened his political instincts and elevated his standing among surviving Volunteers, alongside figures such as Cathal Brugha and Constance Markievicz.

Rise to Leadership and the War of Independence
In 1917 de Valera won a by-election in East Clare and quickly rose in Sinn Fein, becoming its leader and, after the Dail assembled in 1919, the political head of the self-proclaimed Irish Republic. He traveled to the United States in 1919 to seek recognition and raise funds for the new state, working among Irish-American networks associated with John Devoy and Judge Daniel Cohalan and cooperating with envoys such as Harry Boland. In his absence, the campaign at home intensified under Michael Collins, who organized intelligence and guerrilla tactics, and under Arthur Griffith, the movement's senior strategist. Tensions later surfaced between de Valera and Collins, reflecting different temperaments and roles rather than a simple rivalry.

A truce in 1921 opened negotiations with Britain. De Valera remained in Dublin and sent plenipotentiaries to London: Griffith, Collins, Robert Barton, Eamonn Duggan, and George Gavan Duffy. He had advocated a formula sometimes described as external association, seeking maximum Irish sovereignty without triggering war. The Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in December 1921 established the Irish Free State with Dominion status and upheld an oath to the British monarch, a compromise de Valera opposed.

The Treaty Split and Civil War
The Dail debates in early 1922 were bitter. De Valera led the anti-Treaty side, arguing that the settlement fell short of the republic proclaimed in 1916 and ratified by the Dail, while Griffith, Collins, and their allies argued the Treaty offered real freedom and a path to more. The Dail narrowly approved the Treaty; de Valera resigned as head of government. The split in Sinn Fein and the Volunteers (by then often called the IRA) led to the Irish Civil War. On the pro-Treaty side stood the new Free State leadership under W. T. Cosgrave, with military direction from Richard Mulcahy and Michael Collins; on the anti-Treaty side, de Valera served as the principal political figure, while military leadership rested with Liam Lynch and others. The war was brutal and short; Cathal Brugha was killed in 1922, Collins fell in an ambush later that year, and the anti-Treaty forces ultimately ordered a ceasefire and dumped arms in 1923. De Valera was detained during the conflict and its aftermath, emerging to find the republicans defeated and divided.

Founding Fianna Fail and the Road to Power
De Valera remained committed to constitutional politics but clashed with traditional abstentionism in Sinn Fein. In 1926 he founded Fianna Fail with colleagues including Sean Lemass and Countess Markievicz, offering a republican party that would enter the Dail and seek to dismantle the Treaty from within. After an initial refusal to take seats, Fianna Fail TDs entered the Dail in 1927, taking the Oath of Allegiance as a legal requirement while pledging to remove it when able. In 1931 he supported the creation of the Irish Press newspaper to give the movement its own voice.

Fianna Fail won office in 1932, with de Valera becoming head of government (then titled President of the Executive Council). With support from Labour, he began undoing Treaty constraints: freeing many prisoners, removing the Oath, and refusing to remit land annuities to Britain, which sparked an Economic War of tariffs and counter-tariffs. He also confronted the IRA when it turned to violent methods that threatened the state, banning it while simultaneously pursuing a republican constitutional program.

Constitutional Transformation
In 1937 de Valera oversaw the drafting of a new constitution, Bunreacht na hEireann, working closely with civil servants such as John Hearne and Maurice Moynihan. The constitution changed the state name to Eire (Ireland), created the office of president as non-executive head of state, asserted national sovereignty, and replaced the 1922 Free State framework. It reflected Catholic social teaching of the era, acknowledging the special position of the Catholic Church while not establishing it as the state church, and set out fundamental rights and the institutions of government. De Valera, now titled Taoiseach, used the document to express an Irish identity distinct from Britain, while maintaining practical diplomacy.

In 1938 he concluded Anglo-Irish agreements with Neville Chamberlains government, ending the Economic War and securing the return of the Treaty Ports at Cobh, Berehaven, and Lough Swilly. This step significantly enhanced Irish control over its defense and foreign policy on the eve of a global conflict.

Neutrality and the Emergency
During the Second World War, known in Ireland as the Emergency, de Valera held to a strict neutrality. He believed neutrality safeguarded national unity and sovereignty and avoided reopening the wounds of the recent civil conflict. His government enforced censorship, rationing, and security measures; interned members of the IRA; and maintained tight control over communications. Although neutral, Ireland cooperated discreetly with the Allies in matters such as returning downed airmen and sharing meteorological information, while also upholding diplomatic protocol with the Axis. De Valera's condolences visit to the German legation after Adolf Hitler's death in 1945 became one of the most controversial episodes of his career. Winston Churchill publicly criticized Irish neutrality; de Valeras broadcast reply firmly defended Ireland's right to choose its policy and the conditions in which small nations made their decisions.

Opposition, Return to Office, and Succession
Fianna Fail lost power in 1948 to an inter-party coalition led by John A. Costello, which declared the Republic of Ireland in 1949. De Valera accepted the change and reoriented his party in opposition, returning to office in 1951 and again in 1957. His cabinets included loyal colleagues such as Sean Lemass, Frank Aiken, and James Ryan. His later terms were marked by efforts to stabilize the economy, encourage industry, and manage emigration pressures, with gradual policy shifts that prepared the ground for modernization.

In 1959 de Valera was elected President of Ireland, vacating the leadership of government in favor of Sean Lemass, whose more overtly modernizing program reshaped the economy in the 1960s. De Valera served two terms as president, re-elected in 1966. As head of state he presided over the 50th anniversary of the Rising, received distinguished visitors, and maintained a dignified, unifying presence. The 1963 visit of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, an emblem of Irish-American ties that de Valera himself had cultivated since 1919, was among the most memorable events of his presidency.

Personal Life and Character
Reserved and formal in public, de Valera combined deep religious faith with an intellectual's precision and a teacher's clarity. He spoke Irish and English fluently, championed the Irish language, and saw constitutional law as the surest expression of national freedom after revolution. He and Sinead Flanagan raised a family; among their children, Vivion de Valera later served in public life and the Irish Press became a lasting institutional legacy, and Maire de Valera pursued an academic career. He was physically distinctive, tall and spare, with heavy glasses, and his careful, sometimes austere rhetoric influenced political debate for decades. He outlived many contemporaries including Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, Cathal Brugha, and W. T. Cosgrave, becoming an elder statesman whose memories spanned rebellion, state-building, and modern diplomacy.

Legacy
Eamon de Valera died in 1975 at the age of ninety-two. His career traversed every stage of modern Irish history: revolutionary command, national leadership during the war of independence, the trauma of civil war, democratic opposition, constitutional innovation, neutrality in a global conflict, and a culminating presidency. To admirers he was the chief architect of Irish sovereignty and the constitutional order established in 1937; to critics he personified a cautious, rural-minded nationalism that delayed economic opening. Both views acknowledge his centrality. He shared the stage with giants and adversaries alike, Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, W. T. Cosgrave, Richard Mulcahy, Sean T. O'Kelly, Sean Lemass, Frank Aiken, John A. Costello, and international figures from Neville Chamberlain to Winston Churchill, and he shaped the institutions within which his successors would govern. The state he helped forge endured, and the debates he led over independence, identity, and democracy set the terms for Irish political life long after his passing.

Our collection contains 19 quotes who is written by Eamon, under the main topics: Justice - Freedom - Military & Soldier - Equality - Peace.