All progress depends on the unreasonable man.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?

It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.

Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.

Even if animal experimentation was proved to be of value, it would be morally wrong.