Top 1200 Irish Music Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

When Coach Mike Brey at Notre Dame was recruiting me, he was like, 'There will be Irish on the front of the jersey; and Irish on the back of the jersey.' But no one actually knows I am a citizen over there.

Ironically, there is a history of black/Irish communion here in the states; Irish and African American brothers and sisters have often found common cause in fighting the bigotry both communities faced earlier in the 20th century. However, white skin privilege among the Irish separated them from blacks, who had no such advantage to fall back upon. The solution is to fight bigotry and racism wherever they appear, and to root out the forces of oppression as conscientiously as possible.

I always gravitate towards anything from Ireland. With Irish lit, I love the use of language, but also in many instances, the Irish writers are writing about people and circumstances that I can relate to.

I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.

'Ulysses' is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.

My first mentor and inspiration was my Irish Dancing teacher Patricia Mulholland. She created her own form of dance known as Irish ballet and created stage productions of old Irish myths and legends. They were my first experiences on stage. She told my mum I was destined for the stage, and I took that as my cue.

Sinn Fein is an Irish Republican party. We stood in the Assembly election to deliver a prosperous economy and jobs, to protect and enhance public services, support those most in need, and to progress Irish Unity.

Patrick Pearse - who set the events of 1916 in motion when he read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin - is not exactly an unfamiliar name to the Miramichi Irish.

My mother - the Irish side of the family - was very musical. My mother was a singer; there was music around the house all the time.

I'm from a small Irish family of 10, so there always was music in the house. Growing up, my older sisters had things like 'South Pacific' and opera on.

If we turn to early Irish literature, as we naturally may, to see what sort of people the Irish were in the infancy of the race, we find ourselves wandering in delighted bewilderment through a darkness shot with lightning and purple flame.

The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

I'm still an Irish republican; I absolutely believe in Irish unity and am working to achieve that. But over the course of 15 years or more, people like myself and others have been working to end the vicious cycle of conflict.

Did the Warwickshire militia, who were chiefly artisans, teach the Irish to drink beer, or did they learn from the Irish how to drink whiskey?

Ulysses is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.

Thankfully the rest of the world assumed that the Irish were crazy, a theory that the Irish themselves did nothing to debunk. They had somehow got it into their heads that each fairy lugged around a pot of gold with him wherever he went. While it was true that LEP had a ransom fund, because of its officers' high-risk occupation, no human had ever taken a chunk of it yet. This didn't stop the Irish population in general from skulking around rainbows, hoping to win the supernatural lottery.

I grew up mostly with classical, big band, and a lot of Irish music - I really didn't start listening to rock and roll until I was maybe sixteen.

I've always been a fan of old-time hymns and Scots-Irish dirges, though I wouldn't necessarily consider myself an expert on the type of music that was performed in those days.

Maybe part of my animus against the English is the way they have always treated the Irish and they way they still think about the Irish.

I have no prouder boast to say I am Irish and have been privileged to fight for the Irish people and for Ireland. If I have a duty I will perform it to the full with the unshakable belief that we are a noble race and that chains and bounds have no part in us

I'm an Irish-American, and I grew up in an Irish-American neighborhood.

The phrase the violent bear it away fascinated the 20th century Irish-American storyteller Flannery O'Connor, who used it as the title of one of her novels. O'Connor's surname connects her to an Irish royal family descended from Conchobor (pronounced Connor), the prehistoric king of Ulster who was foster father to Cuchulainn and husband of the unwilling Derdriu. In the western world, the antiquity of Irish lineages is exceeded only by that of the Jews.

I grew up in a brick house. What's wrong with bricks? An Englishman took me aside and said, "You have to understand, all the bricklayers in England are Irish, and the English hate the Irish."

It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.

Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?

Irish people never think we're Irish. Americans think we're European or French.

As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with.

Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies' heads. Where they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization.

My feet always danced to Irish traditional music, but I was very glad to get out of the North of Ireland in the mid-Seventies when it was really closed and tight and relentlessly unforgiving.

Roughly 1 in 6 Americans have Irish blood. I'd say it's probably safe to assume that the average Irish-American who only comes out on St. Patrick's Day has no idea of the sort of economic powerhouse Ireland has become.

I play Irish popular music, yeah? Calling it folk is like putting it in a box. It's a living tradition, you know?

I like Irish pubs, except for all the loud music and drinking, and people acting like idiots.

Being Irish-American myself, Irish-American material is readily at hand to me.

I'm one hundred percent Irish, and I'm very proud that I'm Irish American, though I don't know exactly where my ancestors came from. I just know County Cork.

Bill Clinton was one of the greatest presidents that we've seen. He was involved in the peace process in the very beginning, and he not only showed himself to be knowledgeable about Irish history and Irish-British relationships, but also he was very sympathetic to the idea of resolving conflict.

I want to give Irish kids something to be proud of back home. I want to bring out a stronger image of Ireland instead of 'Irish Spring' and 'Lucky Charms' and all that rubbish.

The so-called Boer War advertised British vulnerabilities, and these were confirmed by the Irish rising of 1916 and the subsequent creation of the Irish Free State, blows that attracted the notice and attention of colonial dissidents in Asia and Africa.

I don't think Ireland has ever had a genius for the novel. Of course, there were plenty of Irish novels, but I don't think that was ever the natural means of expression for the Irish.

I don't really go around feeling very Irish at all. I don't go to Irish pubs. I've lived so many places, and I'm still so curious about the bigger world. It's grand to be alive in a time when mobility is so accessible.

The White House was designed by Hoban, a noted Irish-American architect, and I have no doubt that he believed by incorporating several features of the Dublin style he would make it more homelike for any President of Irish descent. It was a long wait, but I appreciate his efforts.

You're an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor. And you shouldn't be limited by your extraction.

Many black people I know are proud of the Irish part of their heritage - an Irish grandparent, say - but they recognise that many people believe in a form of racial purity. And it is from that belief that prejudice starts.

The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).

I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that.

I think most Irish people are creative. Whether it's music, or dance, or... certainly storytelling is in the blood.

My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.

British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question.

No, men and women of the Irish race, we shall not fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic.

I always think of Ireland as a place for complex ideas and prose. I like Irishness. I like Irish culture and Irish literature.

People often ask me why I sing with a strong Irish accent. I suppose when I was five years old, I spoke with a strong Irish accent, so I sang with one, too.

Being Irish means you belong to the clan. It's what you feel. They feel Irish.

If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language I suppose I could call myself a nationalist. As it is, I am content torecognize myself an exile: and, prophetically, a repudiated one.

We have a tradition of passing our history orally and singing a lot of it and writing songs about it and there's kind of a calling in Irish voices when they're singing in their Irish accent.

Percy France told me, similarly, he and Bird used to hang out. They were good buddies. And he said, "Man, we'd just walk through town, sometimes with our horns. And we'd walk by past an Irish bar. And you'd stand outside and check out the music. And Bird would go in and sit in with these traditional Irish musicians. Then we'd past a Greek restaurant and we'd hear that. And Charles "Bird" Parker would go sit in with those guys. He was just listening to everything, reacting to everything.

The fact is that most 'Irish-Americans', in spite of dropping the word 'Irish' into half of all sentences, couldn't find Europe on an atlas, let alone Ireland.

Irish nationalists can never be the assenting parties to the mutilation of the Irish nation. The two nation theory is to us an abomination and a blasphemy.

Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language.

In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.

Like a lot of Irish households we read a lot of Irish history. It was almost Soviet, raising the next generation with a mythic view of their history.