Conor Cruise O'Brien Quotations

The sea which we think of separating the two island actually joins them.

The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail. You can safely appeal to the United Nations in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.

You are not an agnostic.....You are just a fat slob who is too lazy to go to Mass.

Nothing does more to activate Christian divisions than talk about Christian unity.

Human nature doesn't include all human beings. There are human beings who are indifferent to politics, religion, virtually anything.

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

You can safely appeal to the United Nations in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.

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.

The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.

A good man giving bad advice is more dangerous than a nasty man giving bad advice.