By someone who knew him much better than me: "I think Garret lived such a mentally sharp and active life for so long – still writing his regular economics column in the Irish Times to the end – because he was just so curious and endlessly interested in and enjoying the people around him."

"He was *my* taoiseach."

"The majority of men are in no persuasion bigots; they are not willing to sacrifice on every vain imagination that superstition or enthusiasm holds forth, or that even zeal and piety recommend, the certain possession of their temporal happiness …
"If anything can tend to revive and keep [fanaticism] up, it is to keep alive the passions of men by ill usage. This is enough to irritate even those who have not a spark of bigotry in their constitution to the most desperate enterprises; it certainly will inflame, darken and render more dangerous the spirit of bigotry in those who are possessed by it. "