Quotes by Irish authors

See the complete list of authors from Ireland

"Charles Laughton signed me to my first movie contract at 17. He later asked my parents if he could adopt me"

Maureen O'Hara, Actress

"As the 1960s began, a new breed of Hollywood leading lady was emerging. She was elegant, international, and wonderfully comedic"

Maureen O'Hara, Actress

"The Parent Trap gave my career another boost, starring in family comedies"

Maureen O'Hara, Actress

"Every star has that certain something that stands out and compels us to notice them"

Maureen O'Hara, Actress

"Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good"

Gabriel Byrne, Actor

"I'm not a very gregarious person. I can't bear attention being called to me in a public place, which is ridiculous in a business that pays you to be noticed"

Gabriel Byrne, Actor

"And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that"

Gabriel Byrne, Actor

"O'Neill presents a very complex multi-layered kind of challenge. His characters are always deeply complex and, to a great extent, inaccessible"

Gabriel Byrne, Actor

"The only way you can continue to make artistic films is to make an occasional one of those. They kind of keep your marketability going to the extent that people will employ you"

Gabriel Byrne, Actor

"I think there's a bit of the devil in everybody. There's a bit of a priest in everybody, too, but I enjoyed playing the devil more. He was more fun"

Gabriel Byrne, Actor

"Religious suffering is at once the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of the heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium of the people"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"As experimentation becomes more complex, the need for the co-operation in it of technical elements from outside becomes greater and the modern laboratory tends increasingly to resemble the factory and to employ in its service increasing numbers of purely routine workers"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learned to separate them"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"As the scene of life would be more the cold emptiness of space than the warm, dense atmosphere of planets, the advantage of containing no organic material at all, so as to be independent of both these conditions, would be increasingly felt"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"Anticipation of movement, through muscular innervation and memory, by its retention of nerve impulse images, extend the present to the limit of a second or so"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"We are fully aware that, in a world at war, each set of belligerents is over ready to regard those who are not with them as against them; but the course we have followed is a just course"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"We shall be forced to attempt planned and directed research employing hundreds of workers for many years, and this cannot be done without risking the loss of independence and originality. This is a serious and fundamental obstacle but it may be overcome in two ways"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"The human mind evolved always in the company of the human body, and of the animal body before it was human. The intricate connections of mind and body must exceed our imagination, as from our point of view we are peculiarly prevented from observing them"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"Political and social events must also be effective, but not in a very obvious fashion. But political confusion and prolonged peace undoubtedly affect creative thought but whether they respectively hinder or help it is not at all certain"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"Marxists have some way of analyzing the development of affairs which enables them to judge far in advance of scientific thinkers what the trend of social and economic development is to be"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"The economic and social problems would tend to become, like the military situation, more and more difficult as time went on and we became more and more isolated"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"The problem is essentially that of communications to an army in action. After a rapid advance communications become disorganized, and there is a temporary halting until they are again in working order"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"Naturalism aimed at giving the primitive wishes full play but failed because these wishes are too primitive, too infantile, too inconsistent with themselves to be satisfied even by the greatest license"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"We, of our time, have played our part in the perseverance, and we have pledged ourselves to the dead generations who have preserved intact for us this glorious heritage, that we, too, will strive to be faithful to the end, and pass on this tradition unblemished"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"We hope that the plain people - the labourers and small farmers - will take this opportunity of coming together and working out the National programme"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"Unemployment is due to the large import of goods from Britain and other countries. The Government haven't used the powers which they have for the benefit of the country"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"If there is to be any hope of prosperity for this country it is by reversing that policy which made us simply the kitchen garden for supplying the British with cheap food"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"I shall strive not to be guilty of adding any fuel to the flames of hatred and passion which, if continued to be fed, promise to burn up whatever is left by the war of decent human feeling in Europe"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"From the moment this war began, there was, for this state, only one policy possible, neutrality"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"It is the duty of our men to enroll themselves in the national services. We need all our manpower for defence. For the military and... we need a quarter of a million men"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"Since this war began our sympathy has gone out to all the suffering people who have been dragged into it. Further hundreds of millions have become involved since I spoke at Limerick fortnight ago"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"If war comes upon us, it will come as a thief in the night"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"The psychology of a complex mind must differ almost as much from that of a simple, mechanized mind as its psychology would from ours; because something that must underlie and perhaps be even greater than sex is involved"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"The present aristocracy of western culture, at the moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"A part of sexuality may go to research, and a much larger part must lead to aesthetic creation. The art of the future will, because of the very opportunities and materials it will have at its command, need an infinitely stronger formative impulse than it does now"

John Desmond Bernal, Scientist

"When we have done our best, we can, as a united people, take whatever may befall with calm courage and confidence that this old nation will survive and if death should come to many of us, death is not the end"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"It is indeed hard for the strong to be just to the weak, but acting justly always has its rewards"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

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