Ian Paisley

The Reverend Ian Richard Kyle Paisley (born April 6, 1926 - September 12, 2014) was a politician and church leader in Northern Ireland.

1970s

 * I say to the Dublin government, Mr Faulkner says it's "hands across the border to Dublin". I say, if they don't behave themselves in the South, it will be shots across the border!
 * In response to Northern Ireland Prime Minister Brian Faulkner's signing of the Sunningdale Agreement with the Republic of Ireland in 1974 []

1980s

 * Don't come crying to me if your homes are attacked. You will reap what you sow.
 * After been forcibly carried out from the Assembly building by police (1986)[]


 * We're on the verge of civil war in Northern Ireland. Why? Because if you take away the forums of democracy you don't have anything left.
 * After been forcibly carried out from the Assembly building by police (1986)[]


 * "I have read in the Book of Revelation the power of the word of testimony, but I never realised what power was in a martyr's testimony. If I had brought a ton of explosives and let them off in that Assembly it could not have had a greater effect. That vast Assembly erupted, and the books started to fly and the punches started to be thrown, and the kicking started, but I held my ground and maintained my testimony. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EUROPE TODAY AND EUROPE IN REFORMATION TIMES. This afternoon I read again the story of Luther, at the Diet of Worms. Who presided over the Diet of Worms? The Emperor Charles, Head of the Holy Roman Empire. Who was he? He was a Habsburg. It is interesting to note that one of the men who attacked me is the last of the Habsburgs-Otto Habsburg, the Pretender to the Crown of Austria and Hungary. I said to myself, 'The Habsburgs are still lusting for Protestant blood. They are still the same as they were in the days of Luther.' The members of the Roman Catholic Party of Mr. Le Pen of which John Taylor is a member were round me battering away at me as hard as they could"
 * None Dare Call Him Antichrist Sermon, Martyrs' Memorial Free Presbyterian Church, October 16, 1988.

1990s

 * "Never confuse sitting on your side with being on your side."
 * To Jeremy Hanley, who had introduced himself to Paisley saying "How do you do? I did not realise that you were on our side."[]


 * I was born in the island of Ireland. I have Irish traits in me - we don't all have the traits of what came from Scotland, there is the celtic factor... and I am an Irishman because you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman.
 * Cited by Feargal Cochrane in "The Unionists of Ulster: An ideological Analysis" CAIN Web Service, from James Loughlin, Ulster Unionism and British National Identity Since 1885 London and New York: Pinter, 1995, p. 217. (The original quote is undated in the immediate source)

2000s

 * "There's a silence in this house today. There's a silence all over Northern Ireland today.  There's grieving and there is despair.  But behind the despair, there is being born a unity that we haven't seen before... I would like to commend publicly here today the priest of Antrim, the Roman Catholic priest.  He made one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard from any of the cloth and he really said in Down to everyone that he did not want in his parish anybody like these men who did this task.  And those of us who know Northern Ireland know that it takes some show of strength in a place like Antrim to say those words... We're coming up to St. Patrick's Day.  St. Patrick preached the gospel of Jesus Christ in Ireland.  And I was just thinking today, the only thing these murderers have done: they have desecrated the shamrock by trying to pour the blood of their innocent victims upon it."
 * Speaking in the House of Commons after the shooting dead of two unarmed British soldiers outside Massereene Barracks in March 2009.[]