Malachy McCourt Quotes
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Democracy to me is letting the other person speak and being dissenting without being disagreeable.
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Somebody once said that the Irish derived the greatest benefit from the English language. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter, they fling it at the sky like paint pots full of rainbow colors.
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When an English man speaks well, for example now, and this is another way of putting us down, they say he's "eloquent" you see. "Oh, eloquent chap they are!" An Irish person speak well, they say, "Ah, you have the gift of the gab." "Ah, you kissed the blarney stone." You see, all of this putting us down.
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Do whatever you want because that's not what you are. That's what you do for the moment.
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To be Irish today is the abandonment of shame and the younger people are moving it out and they're moving the fear away. They're not afraid, they're adventurous.
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It's one day at a time, that's all there is to it, and so I don't have to worry about it. All I do is, okay, I do not have to drink. And if I feel like it, I postpone it for ten minutes, and that way I find something else to do in the meantime.
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I think people are so disillusioned with the parties. It's one party with two different names, and they are so spineless.
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They don't allow a dying on the highway. No Passing. They give you a ticket if you die on the highway.
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I've seen so many horrible and awful results and consequences of people practicing alcoholism. It's murder, I've seen that. I've seen a lot of suicides, a lot of strange sins.
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I kind of miss the old sleazy Times Square, in a way. And yet I don't mind not being accosted by all sorts of strange people.
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We are spectators to violence, and therefore are, how well we don't know and make sure we don't know the difference of real violence to that of simulation.
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To lose one parent is a tragedy, to lose both is utter carelessness.
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I'm an alcoholic, recovering. And I used to smoke cigarettes, and I was a philanderer and I, wouldn't call myself good.
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This is the place for me where every single dream I ever had came to fruition and I love it dearly. I love ya, New York.
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The alcoholism got me and I ruined my first marriage with drinking and the lying and the deceit and infidelity, and all of that. The whole bloody thing.
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There were a few people who got jobs in Limerick, a big barrel on wheels, and it was a barrel that went back and forth, and a shovel and a broom. So, they went around shoveling the horseshit into this barrel. So, you got that job when you were around 15, and then you got to retire at the age of 65, with a pension. A small pension. So that would be 50 years of shoveling horseshit. And I was advised very seriously that I should get that job.
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I had great faith that perhaps this man Obama would do something, but he is, we're all in the grip of big money.
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Imagination in the child is powerful. Reading and laughter and love are essential in our lives.
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Never make any reference to the other person's family. "You're just like your - " because that is out, completely.
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I absolutely love the public transportation system in New York. No matter what, no matter how people complain, it is the best in the world.
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I tell my children, shut up and let me speak. What I've learned, I have been married for 45 years and in my own family It is that I've learned to stop being judgmental, to listen.
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The future has to do with fear. Don't attempt to come up here. Don't attempt to go forward, you were nobody, you are nobody, and you'll always be nothing, so don't even think about coming here because if you do, something awful will happen to you.
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Being a kid myself, I loved playing and I loved playing with words, and making up things and riddles and songs and not afraid of being silly in public.
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I stay in the present, so I don't know about the future.
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I wonder what I can do about war. Is it the destiny of human kind to eventually wipe ourselves out with these weapons of mass destruction? Are we stupid to think that we can control them?
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The Supreme Court gives corporations the same rights as a human being. It's absurd. You can't do that.
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The purpose of the media is to make us all spectators, to watch. So that's why we have millions of fat children watching the games, eating and consuming and not playing themselves.
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I see the way I look upon organized religion, I was a victim of that of mythology, and of cruelty, and all the absurd stuff.
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Here am I, a human being and that has a body that is getting old. And I only have one, I can't trade it in.
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To me a saint is a severely edited sinner. That's what I think.
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