Day 1
“I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul. My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother’s heart… I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien oppressive unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land… I believe and stand by the God given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence and the right of any Irish man or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured."
"Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally, and economically. I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt the barbarity of H-block or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed who I deeply proud to know as the risen people.”
Day 10
"I may be a sinner but I stand and if it so be will die happy knowing that I do not have to answer for what these people have done to our ancient nation."
"We wish to be treated not as ordinary prisoners for we are not criminals. We admit no crime unless that is the love of one’s people and country is a crime."
"Would Englishmen allow Germans to occupy their nation or Frenchmen to allow Dutchmen to do likewise?"
Day 17
(St. Patrick’s Day)
in Gaelic (last entry)
"If they aren’t able to destroy the desire for freedom they won’t break you. They won’t break me because the desire for freedom and the freedom of the Irish people is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then we will see the rising of the moon."
