Bono Quotes

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‘Are people interested?’ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

U2 was involved in Live Aid, and I ended up going to Ethiopia and working there for some time with my wife, Ali.

Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to 400 million of the world’s poorest people.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‘Is this it? Are we still relevant?’

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

Rock music is niche.

Particularly conservative Christians, I was very angry that they were not involved more in the AIDS emergency.

Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores.

If September 11th has taught us anything, it’s certainly that the world has never been so interdependent. It is impossible now to be an island of prosperity in a sea of despair.

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

When you align yourself with God’s purpose as described in the Scriptures, something special happens to your life.

What I like about pop music, and why I’m still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.

Sadly, I do my homework. I’ve a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I’ll read C. Fred Bergsten’s defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It’s embarrassing to admit.

Facebook are an amazing team, a brilliant team. It’s a technology that brings people together.

I’m never nervous.

Because I was suspicious of the traditional Christian church, I tended to tar them all with the same brush. That was a mistake, because there are righteous people working in a whole rainbow of belief systems – from Hasidic Jews to right-wing Bible Belters to charismatic Catholics.

What’s so powerful about the Psalms are, as well as they’re being gospel and songs of praise, they are also the blues.

Rock ‘n’ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

It’s very important for Christians to be honest with God, which often, you know, God is much more interested in who you are than who you want to be.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

I felt rich when I was 20 years old and my wife was paying my bills. Just being in a band, I’ve always felt blessed.

The less you know, the more you believe.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

When people say, you know, ‘Good teacher,’ ‘Prophet,’ ‘Really nice guy’… this is not how Jesus thought of Himself. So you’re left with a challenge in that, which is either Jesus was who he said he was or a complete and utter nut case. You have to make a choice on that.

I believe that Jesus was, you know, the Son of God. And I understand that… we need to be really, really respectful to people who find that ridiculous and… preposterous.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don’t read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2’s audience.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

Rock stars are good at making noise.

Marriage is this grand madness, and I think if people knew that, they would perhaps take it more seriously.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can’t un-see.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

I always think if you are asking somebody for something it is a good idea to give them something first.

You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It’s very real. It’s very strong.

You’ve gotta be very careful that grace and politeness do not merge into a banality of behavior, where we’re just nice, sort of ‘death by cupcake.’

Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.

I think ‘Invisible’ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

I have learned to interface – what I think would be the contemporary term – with various different lexicons, and people speak very different languages. I’ve learned to speak in a lot of tongues, and I can live with the bellicose language of some fervent, fire-breathing Christians, sure.

The great music for so many artists – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones – was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both.

Facts, like people, want to be free – and when they’re free, liberty is usually around the corner.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

I really have had to swallow my own prejudice at times.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it’s mad that people like me are listened to – you know, rap stars and movie stars.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.

I’m the man that brought you the mullet.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that’s why they’re so relatable.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

So what we’re talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we’re facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

You know, God has some really weird kids, and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.