No priest who had sexually abused a child should be trusted again in any parish or ministry involving children.- The Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell
Sanctimonious claptrap.
- John Kelly, co-ordinator of the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse group, on plans by the Archdiocese of Dublin to establish a child-protection service
I've no heart for someone who starves his folks.
- President Bush's message to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
Human life is becoming cheap.
- The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, on the surge in alcohol-fuelled violence
If the US attacks Iraq there will be open war here. No American will be safe.
- Maulana Samiul Haq, leader of Pakistan's Islamic party alliance
We are facing silent extinction unless we stand up and be counted.
- The IFA president, John Dillon, on the forthcoming protest by farmers
Sometimes, however, there are no straightforward answers and no convenient cast of villains. Sometimes it is not possible to squeeze the events of years into a pithy executive summary.
- An editorial in the Bar Review, the official Bar Council journal, defends the findings of the Lindsay tribunal which investigated blood-product contamination
Our refusal to take the soft option and plunge the country back into the days of massive debt and huge spending is the right thing for the short term, the medium term and the long term.
- The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern
I was crying and I saw quickly that my story did not carry any weight with them. I am frightened and I am not sleeping.
- Touria Tiouli, a French businesswoman, is charged with adultery in Dubai after alleging three men sexually assaulted her
There will be no reaction to this because unionists throughout Northern Ireland generally had this understanding that the Conservatives were considering redrawing the boundaries.
- Lord Kilclooney, formerly Ulster Unionist deputy leader John Taylor, as it emerges that the British government considered partitioning the North to separate Catholics and Protestants
It seemed an easy way to make money.
- Author Annie Proulx on writing
Now that a human clone is born, this is just the first step. There will be more, much, much more.
- Claude Vorilhon, leader of the Raelian cult, which claims to have cloned the first human
Abbeylara was a tragedy. Unfortunately it happened . . . but it is not to be termed as a scandal.
- The Garda Commissioner, Pat Byrne, on the shooting dead of John Carthy by police marksmen in April 2000
He would have shot me, absolutely shot me.
- Ben Dunne, former head of the Dunnes Stores retail empire, imagines his father's reaction were he alive when Ben Dunne gave €1.3 million to Charles Haughey
The whole world is New York now, New York in the 19th century. We're going to have to learn to smile and deal with everybody.
- Movie director Martin Scorsese