"Where all your rights have become only an accumulated wrong, where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to gather the fruits of their own labors, and, even while they beg, to see things inexorably withdrawn from them – then, surely, it is a braver, a saner and a truer thing to be a rebel, in act and deed, against such circumstances as these, than to tamely accept it, as the natural lot of men." - Roger Casement, Irishman, (1864-1916).
Brendan Behan post Patrick-isms
on growing up in Dublin during the Depression:
To get enough to eat was regarded as an achievement. To get drunk was a victory.
on criticism:
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
on flatware:
If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.
on neighbors:
The English always have their wars in someone else's country.
on marital obligations:
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
on government:
I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
on the lost tribe:
Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
on P.R.:
There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.