Bobby Sands
They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart.Collection: Freedom
The body doesn't accept the lack of food, and it suffers from the temptation of food and from other aspects which gnaw at it perpetually. The body fights back sure enough, but at the end of the day, everything returns to the primary consideration - that is, the mind.Collection: Food
I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.Collection: Freedom
They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.Collection: Freedom
I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.Collection: War
Everyone, Republican or otherwise has their own particular part to play. No part is too great or too small, no one is too old or too young to do something.Collection: Great
Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.
They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken.
I was a skeleton compared to what I used to be, but it didn't matter. Nothing really mattered except remaining unbroken.
I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-blocks or to gain the rightful recognition of political prisoners, but primarily because what is lost here is lost for the Republic.
We must see our present fight right through to the very end.
There is that much to be done that no select or small portion of people can do; only the greater mass of the Irish nation will ensure the achievement of a Socialist Republic, and this can only be done by hard work and sacrifice.
We wish to be treated 'not as ordinary prisoners,' for we are not criminals. We admit no crime - unless, that is, the love of one's people and country is a crime.
I am (even after all the torture) amazed at British logic. Never in eight centuries have they succeeded in breaking the spirit of one man who refused to be broken. They have not dispirited, conquered, nor demoralised my people, nor will they ever.
'They have nothing in their entire arsenal to break the spirit of one single Republican prisoner-of-war who refuses to be broken,' I thought, and that was very true. They cannot or never will break our spirit.
Well, I have gotten by twenty-seven years, so that is something. I may die, but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to the Republic and liberation of our people.
If a British government experienced such a long and persistent resistance to domestic policy in England, then that policy would almost certainly be changed... We have asserted that we are political prisoners, and everything about out country - our arrests, interrogations, trials, and prison conditions - show that we are politically motivated.
I was set to confront the might of the imperial empire with an M-1 carbine and enough hate to topple the world.
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.Collection: Destiny
You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea.Collection: Ideas
They will not criminalise us, rob us of our true identity, steal our individualism, depoliticise us, churn us out as systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots. Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal.Collection: Struggle
I may die, but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to the Republic and liberation of our people.Collection: People
All things must come to pass as one, so hope should never die. There is no height or bloody might that a freeman can’t defy. There is no source or foreign force can break one man who knows that his free will no thing can kill … and from that, freedom grows.Collection: Men
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Home
We refuse to lie here in dishonor! We are not criminals, but Irishmen! This is the crime of which we stand accused.Collection: Lying
Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminalCollection: Struggle
I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.Collection: Hunger Strike
Generations will continue to meet the same fate unless the perennial oppressor-Britain-is removed, for she will unashamedly and mercilessly continue to maintain her occupation and economic exploitation of Ireland to judgment day, if she is not halted and ejected.Collection: Fate
I'll wear no convicts uniform nor meekly serve my time that Britain might brand Irelands fight 800 years of crime.Collection: Fighting