John Hume quotes

John Hume was an Irish politician and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, widely recognized as a key architect of the Northern Ireland peace process. His work emphasized dialogue, reconciliation, and nonviolence in resolving conflict. He played a central role in shaping the Good Friday Agreement and remains a symbol of peaceful leadership. Here are 26 of his quotes:

Total ghettoization, because they were in charge of public housing, the local council, and they deliberately located people in a ghetto situation in order to ensure that they maintained control.

John Hume

The violence had broken out in both sides, but our philosophy as a party was very, very clear.

John Hume

In working class districts, you had several families living together in the one house, and it was very difficult to get a house, because the politicians who controlled housing were doing so in a very discriminatory fashion.

John Hume

The basis of peace and stability, in any society, has to be the fullest respect for the human rights of all its people.

John Hume

If the word 'No' was removed from the English language, Ian Paisley would be speechless.

John Hume

My father was unemployed and I was the eldest of seven children. We were very poor. And when you ask how did we support ourselves, the only funding that we had was unemployment payments.

John Hume

Therefore they should come to the table and reach an agreement that would protect their identity.

John Hume

Like everybody at that age, I read an awful lot of pulp fiction. But at the same time, I also read quite a bit of history and read that as much for pleasure as part of a curriculum.

John Hume

We did not seek ideological confrontation.

John Hume

I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.

John Hume

The civil rights movement in the United States was about the same thing, about equality of treatment for all sections of the people, and that is precisely what our movement was about.

John Hume

In coming to that agreement, my party had a clear philosophy throughout. In Northern Ireland, we should have institutions that respected the differences of the people and that gave no victory to either side.

John Hume

They believed that Britain was in Ireland defending their own interests, therefore the Irish had the right to use violence to put them out. My argument was that that type of thinking was out of date.

John Hume

The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to see Irish unity.

John Hume

I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that.

John Hume

The only thing I shall talk about is my sporting achievements at school. My primary sporting achievement at school was that I dodged games for two complete years and was well through the third year before they discovered that I had completely avoided all games.

John Hume

Every child growing up will look to their parents, my mother and my father. My grandmother lived with us. I picked up quite a bit of family lore and history from her, which was interesting.

John Hume

My father was a civil servant, fairly sort of middle ranking, low to middle ranking. He worked almost entirely in what was then called Administrative Labour, dealing with employment and unemployment issues.

John Hume

These are the influences that everybody has. Some individuals might stand out because of one thing or another, but whether one's perception as a child of what was important or not is accurate, I don't know.

John Hume

In my opinion, what changed the situation eventually - and, of course, it took a lot of time to change it, things like that don't change in a week or a fortnight - was the new educational system.

John Hume

People were so keen to get investment. In those days, there was quite significant unemployment in Northern Ireland, and that had been the general pattern in Northern Ireland for many, many years.

John Hume

I grew up in Derry, of course, and it was - Derry was the worst example of Northern Ireland's discrimination.

John Hume