Guns don't win wars; guns and bombs may kill a man but they cannot make him follow their lead, nor will they ever coerce an unyielding man to yield.

We refuse to lie here in dishonor! We are not criminals, but Irishmen! This is the crime of which we stand accused.

There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.

I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken.

I'll wear no convicts uniform nor meekly serve my time that Britain might brand Irelands fight 800 years of crime.

My life now centered around sleepless nights and stand-bys, dodging the Brits and calming nerves to go out on operations. But the people stood by us. The people not only opened the doors of their homes to lend us a hand, but they opened their hearts to us. I learned that without the people, we could not survive and I knew that I owed them everything.