Taken from Independent Labour Party of Ireland:
Ireland Upon The Dissecting Table (April 1914).

While this quote and article are talking about Ulster, the words themselves and the intent behind them, to stir the current generation to action are applicable today. The dismemberment and dissection we face may not be identical to those of Connolly's day faced, but the idea is the same. How will we be remembered by our children and future generations of the Irish people?

"I regard each nation as the possessor of a definite contribution to the common stock of civilisation, and I regard the capitalist class of each nation as being the logical and natural enemy of the national culture which constitutes that definite contribution.

Therefore, the stronger I am in my affection for national tradition, literature, language, and sympathies, the more firmly rooted I am in my opposition to that capitalist class which in its soulless lust for power and gold would bray the nations as in a mortar."

#nation

Taken from A Continental Revoultion (1914).

"Freedom, we believe, cannot flourish, or even awaken into life in the miasmatic atmosphere of wirepulling and intrigue, but as St Just said:–

Liberty is born in storm and tears as the Earth arose out of chaos, and as man comes wailing into the world.

We who have faced the storm for industrial liberty, and wept the tears for the sufferings of our own class will not shrink from either for the sake of our country.

Try us!"

#country

Taken from The National Danger (1914).

"...remember that even under the most favorable circumstances, even if by some miracle, we were able to cover the green fields of Erin with huge, ugly factories, with chimneys belching forth volumes of poisonous smoke and coating the island with a sooty desolation – even then we would quickly find that under the conditions born of the capitalist system our one hope of keeping our feet as a manufacturing nation would depend upon our ability to work longer and harder for a lower wage than the other nations of Europe, in order that our middle class may have the opportunity of selling their goods at a lower price than their competitors. This is equivalent to saying that our chance of making Ireland a manufacturing country depends upon us becoming the lowest blacklegs in Europe. Even then the efforts would be doomed to failure, for the advent of the yellow man into the competitive arena, the sudden development of the capitalist system on China and Japan, has rendered forever impossible the uprise of another industrial nation in Europe."

#globalism
#environmentalism

Taken from Erin's Hope, The End & The Means (1909).

"The present crisis in Ireland is shattering many reputations and falsifying many predictions, but to the careful observer it is becoming daily apparent that it will leave intact at least one reputation, that of those who pinned their faith to the working-class as the anchor and foundation of any real nationalism that this country can show. Here and there the working class may waver, here and there local influences may exert sufficient pressure to weaken or corrupt the manhood of the workers, but speaking broadly it remains true that in that class lay the only hope of those who held fast to the faith that this Ireland of ours is a nation distinct and apart from all others, and capable of working out its own destiny and living its own life."

#nationalism #nation

"The Labour Movement in Ireland stands for the ownership of all Ireland by all the Irish; it therefore fights against all things calculated to weaken the hold of the Irish upon Ireland, as it fights for all things calculated to strengthen the grasp of the Irish people upon Ireland and all things Irish."

#irishpeople

Both quotes taken from The Hope of Ireland (1914).

"...arise an Ireland nationally free; an Ireland able to develop a real civilisation based upon that broad democracy of common ownership which the Celtic civilisation of our forefathers foreshadowed."

#celtic

Taken from Appeal to the Irish Working Class (1914).

Taken from War: What It Means To You (1914).

"Betrayed and deserted by all but a faithful few, Ireland was attacked by every poisonous agency ever brought to bear upon the mind and soul of a people. Her religion, her love of nationality, her strict sexual morality, her natural affection for the weak, her sympathy for suffering and distress – every high and noble instinct implanted in her by ages of suffering, was appealed to that her children might deny the past of their country, and surrender their hopes of moulding its future. Ireland was asked, nay, was ordered, to deny all that her martyrs had affirmed, to affirm all that her martyrs had denied. And this assault upon the soul of the country was planned and carried out in all its minutes and most revolting details by the men whom a cruel fate had allowed to become the leaders and guides of Irish public opinion."

#nation #martyrs #country

Taken from Ireland's Travail and Ireland's Resurrection (1915).

"At the present moment this Empire has dominions spread all over the seven seas. Everywhere it holds down races and nations, that it might use them as its slaves, that it might use their territories as sources of rent and interest for its aristocratic rulers, that it might prevent their development as self-supporting entities and compel them to remain dependent customers of English produce, that it might be able to strangle every race or nation that would enter the field as a competitor against British capitalism or assert its independence of the British capitalist."

#irishrace #nation

Taken from In Praise of the Empire (1915), this quote again highlights that Connolly uses the word "race" in the same way we use "ethnicity".