Eamon De Valera Quotes

“We, of our time, have played our part in the perseverance, and we have pledged ourselves to the dead generations who have preserved intact for us this glorious heritage, that we, too, will strive to be faithful to the end, and pass on this tradition unblemished.”

— Eamon De Valera

“Here, in Cork district, you have in combination all the dangers which war can inflict.”

— Eamon De Valera

“If war comes upon us, it will come as a thief in the night.”

— Eamon De Valera

“We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.”

— Eamon De Valera

“When we have done our best, we can, as a united people, take whatever may befall with calm courage and confidence that this old nation will survive and if death should come to many of us, death is not the end.”

— Eamon De Valera

“The part which American friendship played in helping us to win the freedom we enjoy in this part of Ireland has been gratefully recognized and acknowledged by our people.”

— Eamon De Valera

I shall strive not to be guilty of adding any fuel to the flames of hatred and passion which, if continued to be fed, promise to burn up whatever is left by the war of decent human feeling in Europe.

— Eamon De Valera

We hope that the plain people - the labourers and small farmers - will take this opportunity of coming together and working out the National programme.

— Eamon De Valera

“From the moment this war began, there was, for this state, only one policy possible, neutrality.”

— Eamon De Valera

“It is the duty of our men to enroll themselves in the national services. We need all our manpower for defence. For the military and ... we need a quarter of a million men.”

— Eamon De Valera

“Unemployment is due to the large import of goods from Britain and other countries. The Government haven't used the powers which they have for the benefit of the country.”

— Eamon De Valera

“Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War.”

— Eamon De Valera

“It is indeed hard for the strong to be just to the weak, but acting justly always has its rewards.”

— Eamon De Valera

“If there is to be any hope of prosperity for this country it is by reversing that policy which made us simply the kitchen garden for supplying the British with cheap food.”

— Eamon De Valera

“Since this war began our sympathy has gone out to all the suffering people who have been dragged into it. Further hundreds of millions have become involved since I spoke at Limerick fortnight ago.”

— Eamon De Valera

“The economic and social problems would tend to become, like the military situation, more and more difficult as time went on and we became more and more isolated.”

— Eamon De Valera

“We are fully aware that, in a world at war, each set of belligerents is over ready to regard those who are not with them as against them; but the course we have followed is a just course.”

— Eamon De Valera

“God has been pleased to save us during the years of war that have already passed. We pray that He may be pleased to save us to the end. But we must do our part.”

— Eamon De Valera

“By keeping the annuities, we could build up a national industry every years as big as the Shannon Scheme.”

— Eamon De Valera

“It is my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Michael Collins and it will be recorded at my expense.”

— Eamon De Valera

“Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning [to] consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?”

— Eamon De Valera

“Of course I wrote most of the Constitution myself. I remember hesitating for a long time over the US presidential system. But it wouldn't have done - we were too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship which is what the American system really is.”

— Eamon De Valera

“For Irishmen, there is no football game to match rugby and if all our young men played rugby not only would we beat England and Wales but France and the whole lot of them put together.”

— Eamon De Valera

“If liberty is not entire it is not liberty.”

— Eamon De Valera

“All history is man's efforts to realise ideals.”

— Eamon De Valera

An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either.

— Eamon De Valera

“Partition is after all only an old fortress of crumbled masonry - held together with the plaster of fiction.”

— Eamon De Valera