Pearse's maternal grandfather Patrick was a supporter of the 1848 Young Ireland movement, and later a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

Pearse recalled a visiting ballad singer performing republican songs during his childhood; afterwards, he went around looking for armed men ready to fight, but finding none, declared sadly to his grandfather that "the Fenians are all dead".

[6] The Irish-speaking influence of Pearse's grand-aunt Margaret, together with his schooling at the CBS Westland Row, instilled in him an early love for the Irish language and culture.

[8] His father had had very little formal education, but was self-educated;[9] Pearse recalled that at the age of ten he prayed to God, promising to dedicate his life to Irish independence.

In 1905, Pearse represented Neil McBride, a poet and songwriter from Feymore, Creeslough, County Donegal, who had been fined for having his name displayed in "illegible" writing (i.e. Irish) on his donkey cart.

In his 27 June 1905 An Claidheamh Soluis column, Pearse wrote of the decision, "it was in effect decided that Irish is a foreign language on the same level with Yiddish.

The Irish school system, he believed, raised Ireland's youth to be good Englishmen or obedient Irishmen and an alternative was needed.

He was one of four speakers, including Redmond, Joseph Devlin MP, leader of the Northern Nationalists, and Eoin MacNeill a prominent Gaelic Leaguer, who addressed a large Home Rule Rally in Dublin at the end of March 1912.

Speaking in Irish, Pearse said he thought that "a good measure can be gained if we have enough courage", but he warned, "Let the English understand that if we are again betrayed, there shall be red war throughout Ireland".

[19] In November 1913 Pearse was invited to the inaugural meeting of the Irish Volunteers—formed in reaction to the creation of the Ulster Volunteers—whose aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland".

[20] In an article entitled "The Coming Revolution" (November 1913) Pearse wrote: As to what your work as an Irish Nationalist is to be, I cannot conjecture; I know what mine is to be, and would have you know yours and buckle yourselves to it.

Despite opposition from the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Volunteer Executive agreed to share leadership with Redmond and a joint committee was set up.

Pearse, exhilarated by the dramatic events of the European war, wrote in an article in December 1915: It is patriotism that stirs the people.

[27] After six days of fighting, heavy civilian casualties and great destruction of property, Pearse issued the order to surrender.

Roger Casement, who had tried unsuccessfully to recruit an insurgent force among Irish-born prisoners of war from the Irish Brigade in Germany, was hanged in London the following August.

Sir John Maxwell, the Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, sent a telegram to H. H. Asquith, then Prime Minister, advising him not to return the bodies of the Pearse brothers to their family, saying, "Irish sentimentality will turn these graves into martyrs' shrines to which annual processions will be made, which would cause constant irritation in this country.

Pearse is closely associated with his rendering of the Jacobite sean-nós song, "Oró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile", for which he composed republican lyrics.

Louis De Paor writes that Patrick Pearse was "the most perceptive critic and most accomplished poet", of the early Gaelic revival providing "a sophisticated model for a new literature in Irish that would reestablish a living connection with the pre-colonial Gaelic past while resuming its relationship with contemporary Europe, bypassing the monolithic influence of English.

[33] Additionally, his place within Catholicism, where his orthodoxy was challenged in the early 1970s,[34] has been addressed to suggest that Pearse's theological foundations for his political ideas share in a long-existing tradition in western Christianity.

[37] Pearse's apparent "sexual immaturity", and some of his behaviour, has been the subject of comment since the 1970s by historians such as Ruth Dudley Edwards, T. Ryle Dwyer and Seán Farrell Moran, who speculated that he was attracted to young boys.

[40] Fitzgerald and Walker maintain that there is absolutely no evidence of homosexuality or paedophilia; they allege that Pearse's apparent lack of sexual interest in women, and his "ascetic" and celibate lifestyle are consistent with a diagnosis of high-functioning autism.

[42] Cullenswood House, the Pearse family home in Ranelagh where Pádraic first founded St Enda's, today houses a primary Gaelscoil (school for education through the Irish language) called Lios na nÓg, part of a community-based effort to revive the Irish language.

Crumlin (Dublin) has the Pearse College of Further Education, and there was formerly an Irish language summer school in Gaoth Dobhair called Colaiste an Phiarsaigh.

In September 2014, Gaelcholáiste an Phiarsaigh, a new Irish language medium secondary school, opened its doors for the first time in the former Loreto Abbey buildings, just 1 km from the Pearse Museum in St Endas Park, Rathfarnham.

Today Glanmire County Cork boasts the best secondary-level Irish-speaking college in Ireland called Coláiste an Phiarsaigh, which was named in honour and structured around Patrick Pearse's beliefs.