"To me the task is a loathsome one. I go, I go in the spirit of a soldier who acts against his best judgement at the orders of his superior." - Michael Collins on being sent to the Treaty negotiations by De Valera.
"When you have sweated, toiled, had mad dreams, hopeless nightmares, you find yourself in London's streets, cold and dank in the night air. Think - what have I got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted these past 700 years. Will anyone be satisfied with the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this -early this morning I signed my own death warrant. I though at the time how odd, how ridiculous -a bullet might just as well have done the job 5 years ago." - Michael Collins in a letter to John O'Kane after the Treaty.
"In my opinion it gives us freedom, not the ultimate freedom that all nations desire ... but the freedom to achieve it." - Michael Collins on the Treaty in debates.
"Yerra, they'll never shoot me in my own county" - Michael Collins to Joe O'Reilly just prior to his journey to West Cork in August 1922
"That valiant effort and the martyrdoms that followed it finally awoke the sleeping spirit of Ireland" - Michael Collins, regarding the Easter Rising of 1916
"Deputies have spoken about whether dead men would approve of it, and they have spoken whether children yet unborn would approve it, but few have spoken of whether the living approve it." - Michael Collins, Dáil debate, Christmas 1921.
"Put him in to get him out." - Election slogan of Joseph McGuiness, in jail when elected for South Longford.
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