Conor Cruise O'Brien on . . .
Charlie Haughey
"If I saw Mr Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroad, with a stake driven through his heart - politically speaking - I should continue to wear a clove of garlic round my neck, just in case."
- 1982 as political commentator, in the Observer
"He is grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented."
- The description of former taoiseach Charlie Haughey following his comments in 1982 on the Malcolm MacArthur case
Northern Ireland
"In the circumstances it would be understandable if Rees at the moment is thinking along the lines of Louis XV: 'After me the deluge'."
- After meeting then Northern secretary Merlyn Rees in 1975
"Is there not a serious danger that our toying with the idea of an international force, which may well prove entirely chimerical, might let Britain off the hook, providing her with an honourable path of retreat from Northern Ireland in circumstances offering only illusory guarantees for the minority?"
- Commenting on a possible UN force for the North
"The Adams-Hume pact shows the SDLP up for what it has become under John Hume's leadership: a coldly sectarian party which is not above doing a deal with the accomplices of terrorism."
- Commenting in 1993 on talks between SDLP leader John Hume and Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams
"There is in fact more support for Irish unity in Britain than in (the whole) of Ireland . . . Goodwill to an imaginary Ireland is dangerous to people living in Ireland."
- In 1977 as a Labour Party member
Broadcasting ban
"Surely it was more dangerous to leave these people (IRA) in the shadows? . . . In a modern democracy, the autonomy of radio or television was as vital as the freedom of the press of or parliament."
- In 1972 as a Labour TD opposing a ban on IRA and Sinn Féin interviews on RTÉ
"The theory is that broadcasters are so smart and terrorists so dumb, that the broadcaster will show up the terrorist at every turn. Experience of broadcasting in Britain by terrorist spokesmen does not confirm this pretty theory."
- During a debate in 1988 on section 31 of the Broadcasting Act
United Nations
"The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail."
"You can safely appeal to the United Nations in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down."
Catholic Church
"The Bill was too little and too late. If this is an olive branch it is being extended with a very languid hand, almost contemptuous."
- In the Dáil in 1972 on a Bill to amend the Constitution to remove the special position of the Catholic Church
"If the (contraceptive) Bill is defeated, Northern Ireland will point to it as final proof that Home Rule does indeed mean Rome Rule."
- 1973 as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs
UK Unionist Party
"They told me to nail my colours to the mast. Now I can wrap them round my neck."
- As UK Unionist Party candidate in Northern elections in 1996
"Within the UK the Ulster Protestants, about a million
people in a society of more than 50 million, are currently without political clout. In a united Ireland, with a total population of less than six million, the ex-unionists would be a formidable voting bloc, for whose support the other parties would compete."
- Comments which brought about his resignation from the UKUP in 1998