Michael Collins Quotes
Michael Collins delivers gritty reflections on sacrifice, duty and leadership that feel like a late-night confession.
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When you have sweated, toiled, had mad dreams, hopeless nightmares, you find yourself in London's streets, cold and dank in the night air. Think - what have I got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted these past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this; early this morning I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous - a bullet may just as well have done the job five years ago.
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There is but one Earth, tiny and fragile, and one must get 100,000 miles away to appreciate fully one's good fortune in living on it.
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I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before.
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Q: What were you thinking when your colleagues were out there making cosmic history? A: I just kept reminding myself that every single component in this spacecraft was provided by the guy who submitted the cheapest tender.
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“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.”
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“I felt cold just thinking about that, just how things come to an end, how death is subsumed in the pull of daily life, how a man or woman dies, and life goes on. There were no irrevocable losses.”
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“Capitalism has come, not only to serve Britain's purpose by keeping the people divided, but, by setting worker against worker, it has profited by exploiting both. It works on religious prejudices. It represents to the Protestant workman any attempt by the Catholic workman to get improved conditions as the cloak for some insidious political game.”
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“I guess the basic reason I run is that I think a body, like a brain, should be used, stretched, forced to its limits...I feel sorry for those who will never know the desperate pound of 180 beats per minute, or the golden afterglow of recovery from it. The body, like a flying machine, can be operated with greater enjoyment, poise, and confidence if one has explored its limits.”
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“The great truth was that we were not the center of things, or others’ lives, but only so in our own mind’s eye. We were all obscure nobodies at our essence.”
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“It is not to political leaders our people must look, but to themselves. Leaders are but individuals, and individuals are imperfect, liable to error and weakness. The strength of the nation will be the strength of the spirit of the whole people.”
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“The Treaty is already vindicating itself. The English Die-hards said to Mr. Lloyd George and his Cabinet: ‘You have surrendered’. Our own Die-hards said to us: ‘You have surrendered’. There is a simple test. Those who are left in possession of the battlefield have won.”