Ireland

🇮🇪George Bernard Shaw

Literature

1856–1950

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."

🇮🇪Samuel Beckett

Literature

Nouveau Roman

1906–1989

"Does one ever know oneself why one laughs?"

🇮🇪Colin Farrell

Entertainment

b. 1976

"Desperation will allow you to do incredible things in the name of survival."

🇮🇪Michael Elmore-Meegan

Music

b. 1959

"“The future lies in education, for 36 years ICROSS has focused on educating girls and making sure that they see their own potential"

🇮🇪Bono

Music

1960–2021

"Sing the melody line you hear in your own head. Remember, you don't owe anybody any explanations, you don't owe your parents any explanations, you don't owe your professors any explanations."

🇮🇪David Mitchell (author)

Literature

b. 1969

"To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom."

🇮🇪Niall Horan

Music

b. 1993

"You'll never love yourself half as much as I love you and you'll never treat yourself right darling but I want ya too if I let you knoooowww Im here for you then maybe you'll love yourself like I love you ohhhhh"

🇮🇪John Boyne

Literature

b. 1971

"...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go."

"You don't fall in love with someone because it's convenient."

🇮🇪Maeve Binchy

Literature

1939–2012

"On my 100th birthday, piloting Gordon and myself into the side of a mountain."

🇮🇪Anne McCaffrey

Literature

1926–2011

"Anne McCaffrey Guest of Honour at Eurocon 2007"

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."

🇮🇪Patrick Swift

Art

1927–1983

"The painter celebrates life where he finds it. His morality is the morality of enjoyment, of the continuous development of his own taste without shame or fear. It is a sort of heroism."

🇮🇪W.B. Yeats

Literature

1865–1939

"How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face."

🇮🇪Mel Gibson

Entertainment

b. 1956

"I don't think of myself as either American or Australian really, I'm a true hybrid. It's a good thing for me because both of them are really good countries."

🇮🇪John Lydon

Music

b. 1956

"I wanted them to see the gloriousness of the California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah desert. So every chance we got, we stopped the bus and just absorbed that dead heat beauty and that terrain."

🇮🇪Cecelia Ahern

Literature

b. 1981

"Yesterday was a closed book, tomorrow, however, was another story."

"Our creative habits are as mysterious to each other as our domestic habits."

🇮🇪Liam Neeson

Entertainment

b. 1952

"I was reared a Catholic, but I think every day we ask ourselves, not consciously, what are we doing on this planet? What's it all about."

"Good stuff from Kemp, who clumps an attempted yorker from Watson down the ground for four before blasting another full-toss through extra-cover. Watson has bowled like a drain today."

🇮🇪Martin Sheen

Entertainment

b. 1940

"I do it because I can't seem to live with myself if I do not. I don't know any other way to be. It isn't something you can explain; it is just something that you do; it is something that you are."

🇮🇪Enya

Music

b. 1961

"I didn't expect such a huge reaction, but I knew I was doing something different to everything else that was happening at the time ... People feel a very personal connection with the music."

🇮🇪Seán O'Casey

Literature

1880–1964

"Isn't all religions curious? If they weren't you wouldn't get anyone to believe them."

🇮🇪John Banville

Literature

b. 1945

"I suppose many people in Ireland would regard me as being more a European writer than an Irish writer. I don't think this is so."

🇮🇪Siobhan Fahey

Music

b. 1958

"We were written off from day one. Nobody believed in us but us. We kept having hits despite the record company, despite the press."

🇮🇪Arthur Murphy

1727–1805

"Above the vulgar flight of common souls."

"Through one entered the city like a god. Perhaps it was really too much. One scuttles in now like a rat."

🇮🇪Thomas Moore

Literature

1779–1852

"We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk."

🇮🇪Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)

Philosophy

Enlightenment

1694–1746

"Whoever voluntarily undertakes the necessary office of rearing and educating, obtains the parental power without generation."

🇮🇪George Galloway

Politics

b. 1954

"Some believe that those aeroplanes on September 11 came out of a clear blue sky. I believe they came out of a swamp of hatred created by us."

"The truth is that our sovereignty was given away a long time ago, and the Lisbon Treaty was the final nail in the coffin for Ireland’s independence."

🇮🇪Conor McGregor

Art

b. 1988

"We're not here just to take part; we're here to take over."

🇮🇪Spike Milligan

Literature

1918–2002

"If a man dies when you hang him, keep hanging him until he gets used to it."

🇮🇪David Norris

Politics

b. 1944

"On a point of order, I thought I was in Seanad Éireann, but it appears I have inadvertently wandered into a meeting of Donegal County Council."

🇮🇪Dylan Moran

Entertainment

b. 1971

"EGGS! They're not a food, they belong in no group! They're just farts clothed in substance!"

🇮🇪Amy Carmichael

Literature

1867–1951

"One can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving"