Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

Understand that legal and illegal are political, and often arbitrary, categorizations; use and abuse are medical, or clinical, distinctions.

A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station.

War and peace-making, human rights, humanitarian issues have become industries, but nobody looks closely at human greed, at the arms industry and the manufacture of landmines. Art has to take a wider view. The problems of Ireland are my problems, too.

Landmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian - a woman, a child, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make the family meal.

When your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.

In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention.