It wasn't long before people discovered the final horrors of letting an urchin into Parliament.

To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.

My function in life is not to be a politician in Parliament: it is to get something done.

We were born into an unjust system; we are not prepared to grow old in it.

Irish Catholics are more interested in the rosary beads than in the rosary.

In Northern Ireland, if you don't have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness.

Basically, I have no place in organized politics. By coming to the British Parliament, I've allowed the people to sacrifice me at the top and let go the more effective job I should be doing at the bottom.

Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and freedom. She has been a force for conservatism... to ward off threats to her own security and influence.

There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents-if the term is to be used at all.

To gain what is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.

Free love is too expensive.

I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.

I'm not good enough to be a saint and not bad enough to be interesting.

Should an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe's oddest countries. Here, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody's lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people.

One American said that the most interesting thing about Holy Ireland was that its people hate each other in the name of Jesus Christ. And they do!

I got quite bored, serving in the bar. Since I was there, the customers wouldn't talk about women, and with half their subject matter denied them, it was: horses, silence; horses, silence.