There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents-if the term is to be used at all.
BERNADETTE DEVLINThere are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents-if the term is to be used at all.
BERNADETTE DEVLINHere, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody’s lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people.
BERNADETTE DEVLINIt did not seem to me that prejudice, poverty, discrimination, repression and racism were confined to the North of Ireland.
BERNADETTE DEVLINBasically, I have no place in organized politics. By coming to the British Parliament, I’ve allowed the people to sacrifice me at the top and let go the more effective job I should be doing at the bottom.
BERNADETTE DEVLINFree love is too expensive.
BERNADETTE DEVLINThe Irish aren’t great singers, but they have great songs.
BERNADETTE DEVLINIt wasn’t long before people discovered the final horrors of letting an urchin into Parliament.
BERNADETTE DEVLINBut I make a distinction between the doctrines of the Church, which matter, and the structure invented by half a dozen Italians who got to be pope and which is of very little use to anybody.
BERNADETTE DEVLINI went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.
BERNADETTE DEVLINIrish Catholics are more interested in the rosary beads than in the rosary.
BERNADETTE DEVLINYesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.
BERNADETTE DEVLINI think my life will always be worth living, though I don’t imagine it being very easy.
BERNADETTE DEVLINI could see them everywhere I spoke and still cannot comprehend the mentality that argues that I should have pretended not to see them, because it wasn’t my business.
BERNADETTE DEVLINI got quite bored, serving in the bar. Since I was there, the customers wouldn’t talk about women, and with half their subject matter denied them, it was: horses, silence; horses, silence.
BERNADETTE DEVLINShould an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe’s oddest countries.
BERNADETTE DEVLINTo gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else
BERNADETTE DEVLIN