Leadership Quote by Gerry Adams

A politician praising “determination, selflessness and courage” isn’t just handing out compliments; he’s issuing a receipt for sacrifice and converting it into legitimacy. Gerry Adams frames the freedom struggle as a near-finished project, “towards its fulfilment,” a carefully chosen phrase that avoids the dangerous finality of “won.” That hedge matters in a movement built on contested victories, fractured constituencies, and the messy afterlife of armed conflict. It reassures supporters that the years weren’t wasted while keeping room for the next demand, the next negotiation, the next pressure campaign.

The triad of virtues works like a rhetorical drumbeat: determination (staying the course), selflessness (moral cleansing), courage (heroic elevation). Together they launder a history that many outside the movement view through the harsher vocabulary of terror, coercion, or sectarianism. By spotlighting personal virtues, Adams shifts the conversation from methods to motives, from accountability to endurance. It’s an invitation to see participants not as agents of violence or disruption but as stewards of an unfinished emancipation.

“Freedom struggle” is also a strategic abstraction. It broadens the coalition by letting different listeners pour in their own meanings: civil rights, national identity, prisoner solidarity, anti-state resistance. The intent is to bind a community through shared narrative and to signal continuity between past sacrifice and present political strategy. Underneath the praise is a quiet instruction: stay disciplined, stay loyal, because history is about to vindicate you.