- [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: The Irish people established the Irish Republic. It can only be disestablished by the Irish people.
- Soames: The problem with the Irish is that they'll sing at the drop of a hat, but ask them to talk and they won't.
- Joe O'Reilly: You know what he'd say if he saw you right now, Kitty? Get up off the parliamentary side of your ass and put a bit of color in your face.
- [first lines]
- Joe O'Reilly: [dictating a letter] You've got to think of him the way he was... He was what the times demanded. And life without him seems impossible. But he's dead. And life is possible. He made it possible.
- 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.
- Lincoln prison chaplain: I can't understand your politics, but I appreciate your integrity.
- Eamon de Valera: [running away from the police while disguised as a prostitute] All I'm missing is the high heels!
- [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!