When Christianity was brought to her shores it was received with a joy and eagerness, and held with a tenacity of which there is hardly such another … - Éamon de Valera

In this day, if Ireland is faithful to her mission, and, please God, she will be, if as of old she recalls men to forgotten truths, if she places before them the ideals of justice, of order, of freedom rightly used, of Christian brotherhood—then, indeed, she can do the world a service as great as that which she rendered in the time of Columcille and Columbanus, because the need of our time is in no wise less.

England pretends it is not by the naked sword, but by the good will of the people of the country that she is here. We will draw the naked sword to make her bare her own naked sword.

The Irish genius has always stressed spiritual and intellectual rather than material values.