Ian Paisley

The Reverend Ian Richard Kyle Paisley (born April 6, 1926) is a politician and church leader in Northern Ireland.

Sourced

• "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.[[1]]

• "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 responce to Northern Ireland Prime Minister Brian Faulkner's sigining of the Sunningdale Agreement with the Republic of Ireland in 1974 [[2]]

• "People don't expect to die tomorrow, but they do take out insurance, don't they?"
  • Ian Paisley[[3]]

• "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)[[4]]

• "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)[[5]]

• "I denounce you, Anti-Christ!"

• "I refuse you as Christ's enemy and Antichrist with all your false doctrine."
  • Both addressed at Pope John Paul II on a visit to the European Parliament October 1988

• "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.^{[specific citation needed]}

• "No Surrender"
  • No specific attribution but well known & oft repeated statement^{[citation needed]}

• "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" [[6]]

• "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."[[7]]

The Executive must build on the present situation so that words and principles become actions, so that everyone in Northern Ireland can feel at home, and so that some day those problems will be consigned to history. (Hansard, Northern Ireland: 4 June 2007).

Attributed

• "If he did, we'd have to lock up all the women."
  • In response to President Clintons offer to visit Belfast
• In 1958 he denounced Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother for "committing spiritual fornication and adultery with the Antichrist", after a visit by them to the new Pope, John XXIII.
• "This Romish man of sin is now in Hell!"; to a packed Ulster Hall after the death of John XXIII in June 1963.
• "I will kill all who get in my way", which was shouted out at certain reporters following a loyalist rally in 1968.
• When Terence O'Neill arrived at Stormont for a meeting with Sean Lemass, a former IRA member under Michael Collins during the Anglo-Irish War, Paisley shouted at his car "No mass! No Lemass!"
• After a loyalist rally in 1968, Ian Paisley commented on the burning of Catholic homes by claiming: "Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners"; he also said the massive discrimination in employment and allocation of public housing for Catholics existed because "they breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin".
• In reference to the Ulster Unionist Party's Jewish candidate, Harold Smith, he said, "The Unionist party are boasting he (Harold Smith) is a Jew. As a Jew, he rejects our Lord Jesus, the New Testament, Protestant principles, the Glorious Reformation and the sanctity of the Lord's day. The Protestant throne and the Protestant constitution are nothing to him."
• In 1968, in a heated debate with the fierce Republican Bernadette Devlin, he responded to her accusations of his hypocrisy by saying he, "would rather be British than be fair."
• "We are not prepared to stand idly by and be murdered in our beds."
• "Save Ulster from sodomy!" - Paisley's slogan in a 1970s and 80s campaign against legalising homosexuality.
• Addressing a crowd at Loughgall, County Armagh: "I am anti-Roman Catholic, but God being my judge, I love the poor dupes who are ground down under that system."
• "The Provisional IRA is the military wing of the Roman Catholic Church."
• Describing the then Roman Catholic Primate of All-Ireland, the late Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich as "The IRA's bishop from Crossmaglen"
• "I would never repudiate the fact that I am an Irishman."
• "You were born free. Refuse these chains prepared for you by the treacherous unionists and their ilk. Let Dublin know that there are those of us who must not, can not, and will not bow, ever, to Dublin domination" (Press Conference 1994)
• "Ulster Resistance is not for the faint or half hearted and we will use all means which are deemed necessary to defeat the (Anglo-Irish) Agreement." (Ulster Resistance rally, Belfast, November 1986)