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Daniel O'Connell Quotes
1775–1847 Ireland
Daniel O'Connell (Irish language: Dónal Ó Conaill; 6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was a political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Ireland through to the poorest class of tenant farmer helped secure Catholic emancipation in 1829 and allowed him to take his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom after he was elected a second time.
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18 quotes
How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors...
Gentlemen, you may soon have the alternative to live as slaves or die as free men
I say now, all all, shall be pardoned, forgiven, forgotten, upon giving us Emancipation, unconditional, unqualified, free, and unshackled.
I am most thoroughly convinced that the Repeal alone can keep secure the religion and the liberties of the Irish people.
Good God! what a brute man becomes when ignorant and oppressed! Oh, Liberty, what horrors are perpetrated in thy name! May every virtuous revolutionist remember the horrors of Wexford!
No man was ever a good soldier but the man who goes into the battle determined to conquer, or not to come back from the battle field (cheers). No other principle makes a good soldier.
England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity
If I get into the House, Catholic Education will have an unremitting and sincere advocate.
What care I for the vagabonds if they were twice as powerful? I would rather have one Irish landed proprietor of weight than all their slave-breeders. It is ourselves alone must work out Repeal.
Ireland has claims on your ancient race, as it is the only Christian country that I know of unsullied by any one act of persecution of the Jews.
My days – the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood – have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land – in the land of my sires – I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.
The principle of my political life … is, that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it.
I believe that religion ought to be the basis of education; and I came over from Ireland for no other purpose than humbly to represent the necessity of making religion the basis of education, to establish it not only as a part, but an essential part of it.
I want to make all Europe and America know it – I want to make England feel her weakness if she refuses to give the justice we the Irish require – the restoration of our domestic parliament...
Moderation is the character of genuine patriotism, of that patriotism which seeks for the happiness of mankind. There is another species which is caused by hatred of oppression. This is a passion. The other is a principle.
I love liberty as conducive to increase the portion of human happiness. A great deal of the misery of man can clearly be derived from the form of government under which he lives. Oppression harasses his faculties. Privilege confined by accident insults his understanding.
What I now say I wish to reach England, and I ask, What is to be done with Ireland? What is to be done with the Catholics? One of two things. They must either crush us or conciliate us. There is no going on as we are; there is nothing so dangerous as going on as we are.
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.
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