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Conor Cruise O'Brien Quotes

Conor Cruise O'Brien often nicknamed "The Cruiser", was an Irish politician, writer, historian and academic. His opinion on the role of Britain in Ireland and in Northern Ireland changed during the 1970s, in response to the outbreak of The Troubles. He saw opposing nationalist and unionist traditions as irreconcilable and switched from a nationalist to a unionist view of Irish politics and history. O'Brien's outlook was always radical and the positions he took were seldom orthodox. He summarised his position as intending "to administer an electric shock to the Irish psyche". Internationally, he opposed in person the African National Congress's academic boycott of the apartheid regime in South Africa. These views contrasted with those he espoused during the 1950s and 1960s.

During his career as a civil servant O'Brien worked on the government's anti-partition campaign. At the 1969 general election he was elected to Ireland's parliament, as a Labour Party TD for Dublin North-East, and became a Minister between 1973 and 1977. He was also the Labour Party's spokesman on Northern Ireland during those years. He was later known primarily as an author and as a columnist for the Irish Independent.

✵ 3. November 1917 – 18. December 2008
Conor Cruise O'Brien: 9   quotes 0   likes

Famous Conor Cruise O'Brien Quotes

“There were other fellow-sufferers, lower-case ones: the thousands who were either killed, maimed or bereaved by the devotees of the Irish Republic in Mr Sands's organization, the Provisional IRA. Those other dead, however, being the wrong kind, are implicitly excluded from what is seen as a celestial tête-à-tête.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

Passion & Cunning; Essays on Nationalism, Terrorism and Revolution

“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. If there is something you are expected to do, but don't want to do, or even have done for you, you can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

New Republic, November 4, 1985

“Of history and its consequences it may be said: "Those who can, gloat; those who can't, brood." Englishmen are born gloaters; Irishmen born brooders.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

To Katanga and Back: a UN Case History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962) p. 31

“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

In Irish Times, Dublin (July 15, 1969) ; as quoted in The Columbia Book of Quotations, ed. Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press (1993), p. 900 : ISBN 0231071949, 9780231071949

“If I saw Mr. Haughey buried at midnight at a crossroads, with a stake driven through his heart – politically speaking – I should continue to wear a clove of garlic round my neck, just in case.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

The Observer, October 10, 1982

“I think many non-Jews don't realise the tremendous emotional heat that is involved here in the second half of the twentieth century. A heat that derives from the Holocaust. That is to say the destruction, the mass murder of the Jews in Eastern Europe where most of the Jews were. That both the Israelis and the Jews of the United States are the bereaved children of that population who were murdered. And the bond between the Jews of the United States and the people of Israel has the emotional intensity derived from that common bereavement. And that is what gives. I do understand that people resent the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country [the US], but that power derives from that elemental basic bond of the common bereavement and the horror that is there in the background. Therefore, Jews in the United States do react strongly – and that's what makes this a very powerful lobby, and it is – they do react strongly to anything that seems to them to threaten the connection of the United States in Israel, which is Israel's lifeline. They see this as threatening. This may be an exaggerated fear, but always there is the shadow there of a possible new Holocaust. Israel overrun. The people of Israel massacred again.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

C-SPAN (March 26 1986).

“Irishness is not primarily a question of birth or blood or language; it is the condition of being involved in the Irish situation, and usually of being mauled by it. On that definition Swift is more Irish than Goldsmith or Sheridan, although by the usual tests they are Irish and he is pure English.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

"Irishness", in New Statesman, January 17, 1959
Written under the pseudonym Donat O'Donnell.

“I expected a lot of negative reactions to my critique of aspects of Irish nationalism, and I got a fiercely negative set of reactions of course from sympathisers with Sinn Féin and the IRA, that is to say, people who are so nationalist they were prepared to kill for nationalist objectives.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

Conversations With History, April 4, 2000

“We taught our young people hatred of England. We taught them that the Six Counties were rightfully ours: that is, that they should be ruled by Catholics.”

Conor Cruise O'Brien

Cloch le Carn

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