The Irish genius has always stressed spiritual and intellectual rather than material values. - Éamon de Valera

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 example.

I am against this Treaty not because I am a man of war but because I am a man of peace. I am against this Treaty because it will not end the centuries of conflict between the two nations of Great Britain and Ireland.

No matter what the future may hold for the Irish nation, the seven years — 1916 to 1923 — must ever remain a period of absorbing interest. Not for over two hundred years has there been such a period of intense and sustained effort to regain the national sovereignty and independence. Over the greater part of the period it was the effort of, one might say, the entire nation. An overwhelming majority of the people of this island combined voluntarily during those years in pursuit of a common purpose.