Without the help of the people our exertions would be as nothing.

Charles Stewart Parnell (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) was an Irish Protestant landowner, nationalist political leader, land reform agitator, Home Rule MP in the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party.

Quotes

"No Rent" Manifesto (1881)

"No Rent Manifesto" (18 October 1881)
  • Fellow citizens:The hour to try your souls and to redeem your pledges has arrived.
  • Stand together in face of the brutal, cowardly enemies of your race!
  • Bring English tyranny to its knees.
  • Pay no rent under any pretext!
  • The government, with its bayonets, will learn in a single Winter how powerless are armed forces against the will of a united determined, and self-reliant nation.

Cork address (1885)

Speech in Cork (21 January 1885)
  • Do what is beyond your strength even should you fail sometimes.
  • Without the help of the people our exertions would be as nothing.
  • No man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation.
  • No man has the right to say to his country "Thus far shalt thou go and no further".
  • While we leave those things to time, circumstances and the future, we must each one of us resolve in our own hearts that we shall at all times do everything which within us lies to obtain Ireland the fullest measure of her rights.

Galway speech (1880)

  • I would not have taken off my coat and gone to work had I not known that we were laying the foundations by this movement for the recovery of our legislative independence.

Quotes about Parnell

  • Mr. Parnell has proved to the world the kind of leader the Irish nation is on the point of losing. He is a man of iron determination, inflexible will, matchless courage and audacity and of peerless skill as a leader, but a man who will not allow even the demands of conscience and honour to stand in the way of his purposes, 'who neither fears God nor respects man'. ... Who can withhold his meed of admiration from the old fallen commander and who can help feeling compassion at the ruin of such grandeur!
    • David Lloyd George, Genedl Gymreig (10 December 1890), quoted in Thomas Jones, Lloyd George (London: Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 15.
This article is issued from Wikiquote. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.