Skip to content

If we allow one of the finest and the richest languages in Europe, which, fifty years ago, was spoken by nearly four million Irishmen, to die out without a struggle, it will be an everlasting disgrace, and a blighting stigma upon our nationality.

— Douglas Hyde

Another quote →

More quotes by Douglas Hyde

My aim was to save the Irish language from death - it was dying then as fast as ever it could died - and that ambition did not lend itself to English writing except for propaganda purposes ...

The Gaelic League is founded not upon hatred of England, but upon love of Ireland. Hatred is a negative passion; it is powerful - a very powerful destroyer; but it is useless for building up. Love, on the other hand, is like faith; it can move mountains, and faith, we have mountains to move.

Douglas Hyde (1986)

All Douglas Hyde quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Douglas Hyde (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.