Michael Collins Monologues

Neil Jordan's historical biopic of Irish revolutionary Michael Collins, the man who led a guerrilla war against the UK, helped negotiate the creation of the Irish Free State, and led the National Army during the Irish Civil War.

You've kept us waiting 700 years. You can have your seven minutes.

Bullshit! I'm Minister for Gun-Running, Daylight Robbery, and General Mayhem.

I hate them for making hate necessary, and I'll do what I can to end it.

War *is* murder! Sheer, bloody murder! Had you been here the past year, you'd know that!

I want peace and quiet. I want it so much I'd die for it.

We have a weapon more powerful… than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon… is our refusal!

I would plead with every person here: Make me a scapegoat if you will, call me a traitor, if you will; But please, let's save the country. The alternative to this treaty is a war which no one in this room can even contemplate. If the price of peace, if the price of freedom is the blackening of my name, I would gladly pay it.

Give *us* the future, we've had enough of your past. Give us back our country, to live in , to grow in, to love.

If they shut me up, who will take my place?

Once I start, they'll be no stopping me.

There is one weapon that the British cannot take away from us: we can ignore them.

Jesus, these bastards know more about us than our own mothers.