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James Connolly Biography

James Connolly (Irish: Séamas Ó Conghaile; 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. With James Larkin, he was centrally involved in the Dublin lock-out of 1913, as a result of which he formed the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) that year. He opposed British rule in Ireland, and was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916, when the ICA, along with the larger Irish Volunteers, seized Dublin and held it for six days.

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James Connolly Quotes

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

Capitalist, Female, Slave, Society, Worker, Workers

If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle. , unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs

Army, Array, Country, Mother, Remove, Unless

The Irishman frees himself from slavery when he realizes the truth that the capitalist system is the most foreign thing in Ireland. The Irish question is a social question. The whole age-long fight of the Irish people against their oppressors resolves itself in the last analysis into a fight for the mastery of the means of life, the sources of production, in Ireland. Who would own and control the land? The people, or the invaders; and if the invaders, which set of them - the most recent swarm of land thieves, or the sons of the thieves of a former generation?

Against, Analysis, Fighting, Mean, Oppressors, Son

Such a scheme. . the betrayal of the national democracy of Industrial Ulster, would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements while it lasted.

Back, Betrayal, Carnival, Labour Movement, Mean, Reaction

Don't be 'practical' in politics. To be practical in that sense means that you have schooled yourself to think along the lines, and in the grooves that those who rob you would desire you to think.

Desire, Grooves, Mean, Politics, Rob, Thinking

Yes, friends, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.

Affair, Capitalist, Class, Government, Governments

Yes, ruling by fooling, is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on.

Art, Fool, Fooling, Practice

We believe in constitutional action in normal times; we believe in revolutionary action in exceptional times.

Action, Believe, Constitutional, Normal

Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration.

Conditions, Inspiration, Literature, People

Though I have usually posed as a Catholic, I have not done my duty for 15 years, and have not the slightest tincture of faith left.

Catholic, Done, Duty, Usually, Years

Ireland, as distinct from her people, is nothing to me; and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for "Ireland," and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, shame and degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland-yea, wrought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call Ireland.

Burning, Heart, Liars, Man, Men, Opinion

However it may be for others, for us of the Citizen Army there is but one ideal - an Ireland ruled, and owned, by Irish men and women, sovereign and independent from the centre to the sea, and flying its own flag outward over all the oceans.

Army, Flag, Ideal, Independent, Irish, Ocean

We who hold his (Wolfe Tone) principles believe that any movement which would successfully grapple with the problem of national freedom must draw its inspiration not from the mouldering records of the past, but from the glowing hopes of the living present, the vast possibilities of the mighty future.

Believe, Glowing, Inspiration, Past, Problem, Successfully

State ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism - if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials - but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.

Army, Control, Functionaries, Judges, Judging, Land

No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression.

Complete, Expression, Movement, Poetical, Revolutionary

Under a socialist system every nation will be the supreme arbiter of its own destinies, national and international; will be forced into no alliance against its will, but will have its independence guaranteed and its freedom respected by the enlightened self-interest of the socialist democracy of the world.

Against, Destiny, Independence, Self, System, Under

We, at least, are not loyal men: we confess to having more respect and honour for the raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any, even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers, adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England.

Child, Children, Long, Loyal, Men, Sat

Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent.

Democracy, Enters, Serpent, Union, Unions, Victim

If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.

Army, Castles, Effort, Efforts, Organisation, Set

Only the Irish working class remains as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.

Class, Fight, Fighting, Freedom, Remains, Republican

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