Liam Neeson credited as playing...
Michael Collins
- [Michael Collins arrives at the ceremony to take down the British flag]
- British officer: You're seven minutes late, Mr. Collins.
- Michael Collins: You've kept us waiting 700 years. You can have your seven minutes.
- Cathal Brugha: The Minister is as usual exceeding his brief!
- Michael Collins: And what is my brief, Cathal?
- Cathal Brugha: Intelligence.
- Michael Collins: Bullshit! I'm Minister for Gun-Running, Daylight Robbery, and General Mayhem.
- Harry Boland: What happens next time?
- Michael Collins: Next time, Harry, we won't play by their rules. We'll invent our own!
- Michael Collins: There was a man in west Cork who proposed to five sisters.
- Kitty Kiernan: I suppose they all refused.
- Michael Collins: Then the father died and he proposed to the mother.
- Kitty Kiernan: Are you trying to tell me something?
- Michael Collins: I was working up to a proposal.
- Kitty Kiernan: Is it true, Mick, that all of the women in America wear trousers?
- Michael Collins: Absolutely! Shameless hussies, the lot o' them.
- Michael Collins: I would plead with every person here: Make me a scapegoat if you will, call me a traitor, if you will; But please, let's save the country. The alternative to this treaty is a war which no one in this room can even contemplate. If the price of peace, if the price of freedom is the blackening of my name, I would gladly pay it.
- Eamon de Valera: They call us murderers.
- Michael Collins: War *is* murder! Sheer, bloody murder! Had you been here the past year, you'd know that!
- Michael Collins: We have a weapon more powerful... than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon... is our refusal!
- Michael Collins: Give *us* the future, we've had enough of your past. Give us back our country, to live in , to grow in, to love.
- [Collins and his men have just intercepted an intelligence report from the Royal Irish Constabulary]
- Michael Collins: Jesus, these bastards know more about us than our own mothers.
- Harry Boland: Oh, did you hear there's a butterfly been seen in West Clare? Its wings are green, white, and yellow.
- Michael Collins: Oh, God!
- Harry Boland: The lads say it's a sign.
- Michael Collins: Sign? My... fuck it!
- Harry Boland: I'm tellin' ya.
- Michael Collins: You know the problem with butterflies?
- Kitty Kiernan: What's that?
- Michael Collins: They only last one day.
- Harry Boland: Aye, but what a day, Mick!