It wasn’t long before people discovered the final horrors of letting an urchin into Parliament.
BERNADETTE DEVLINIt wasn’t long before people discovered the final horrors of letting an urchin into Parliament.
BERNADETTE DEVLINI think my life will always be worth living, though I don’t imagine it being very easy.
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 DEVLINThe Irish aren’t great singers, but they have great songs.
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 DEVLINWe were born into an unjust system; we are not prepared to grow old in it.
BERNADETTE DEVLINMy function in life is not to be a politician in Parliament: it is to get something done.
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 DEVLINFree love is too expensive.
BERNADETTE DEVLINThere are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents-if the term is to be used at all.
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 DEVLINYesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.
BERNADETTE DEVLINIt did not seem to me that prejudice, poverty, discrimination, repression and racism were confined to the North of Ireland.
BERNADETTE DEVLINOne American said that the most interesting thing about Holy Ireland was that its people hate each other in the name of Jesus Christ. And they do!
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 DEVLINI’m not good enough to be a saint and not bad enough to be interesting.
BERNADETTE DEVLIN