So when I got to 50 I just thought, Hold on: I'm thin. I've got my hair. I'm well off. I survived, you know
Bob GeldofMen who are not given any voice in this because of the secret nature of the courts, what they're left with is dressing up ridiculously, but at least using humour to try and draw attention to their kids
Bob GeldofIt's really very simple, Governor. When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you're going to get it to these people.
Bob GeldofYou cannot even begin to understand contemporary African politics if you have not read this fascinating book
Bob GeldofAnd part of that is, what is the point of having children if you don't have the privilege of bringing them up?
Bob GeldofThey thought they were Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. In fact, they were more like Tom and Jerry
Bob GeldofBut if somebody dies, if something happens to you, there is a normal process of depression, it is part of being human, and some people view it as a learning experience etc.
Bob GeldofEverything that's rock n roll is ever meant to be is happening now. I need to get over the shock that that thing is actually happening and that thousands of millions of people around the world are watching.
Bob GeldofThere is not a single extant study that supports all the arguments against men being with their children. It's absolute bollocks
Bob GeldofI don't think anyone sets out to malign poor people but certainly that's what we do through organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Bob GeldofWhen I hit 11 so did the careers of Dylan and the Stones. A year later it was the Who and the Kinks.
Bob GeldofWell, a sort of epiphany: I was in a great band. And it's very cool to be at 53 and realise that when you were a kid you were in a great band.
Bob GeldofBut I think Prozac is a lethal drug, I've several friends just haven't made it by taking Prozac.
Bob GeldofYou can't trust politicians. It doesn't matter who makes a political speech. It's all lies - and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.
Bob GeldofActually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American President for Africa. But it's empirically so.
Bob GeldofI do think I feel it but you don't think you are cause at a certain time you are no age but you don't think you are anything. You feel the life you have lived. I feel that. It's been a long fifty years.
Bob GeldofHuman progress depends on unreasonable people. Reasonable people accept the world as they meet it; unreasonable people persist in trying to change it. Well, I'm Bob and I'm an unreasonable person. And if TED is anything, it is the olympics of unreasonable people.
Bob GeldofPhysically I'm tired at the end of the day and quite glad to be reading in bed by midnight
Bob GeldofIt's a tragedy that modernity has released this Ebola beast into the world. It renders humans untouchable, and that's sickening. The international response so far has been scandalous. China has delivered f**k all.
Bob GeldofIt strikes me as being morally repulsive and intellectually absurd that people die of want in a world of surplus.
Bob GeldofIt went beyond idealism and that ridiculous term "activism," which basically means talking about something but doing nothing. . . . We made giving exciting.
Bob GeldofI was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined
Bob GeldofBono as we all know, is in love with the world, he's enamoured by it. I'm enraged by it. He wants to give the world a great big hug, I want to punch its lights out.
Bob Geldof90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What's going on? What's the great discontent at the heart of it?
Bob GeldofWe're looking at the singular condition of poverty. All the other individual problems spring from that condition... doesn't matter if it's death, aid, trade, AIDS, famine, instability, governance, corruption or war. All of that is poverty. Our problem is that everybody tries to heal each of the individual aspects of poverty, not poverty itself.
Bob GeldofBecause we can't comprehend it, and that's what allows us to do it again. And it is the normal, it's the average person that can do this. Again, in an imaginary other universe, maybe we'd have done it. That's the terrible truth that lies at the heart of each of us; that imponderable, 'were I not Jewish, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, would I have gone down on the other side?'
Bob GeldofWhen Michael Jackson sings it is with the voice of angels, and when his feet move, you can see God dancing.
Bob GeldofBlair has called Africa 'a scar on our conscience'. It is more. It is the gaping wound of the world's soul.
Bob GeldofYou'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy.
Bob GeldofI'd always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was in a great band. It was always a collective thing.
Bob Geldof