Bono Quotes

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

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.

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.

We can't fix all problems but we must fix the ones we can

Overcoming my dad telling me that I could never amount to anything is what has made me the megalomaniac that you see today.

God is so big. It's a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we're small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

It's quite widespread in rock culture, that mythology of the shooting star. I'd rather be the North star. As bob (Dylan) says, you can navigate by it.

Happy the country that lives on nothing but its wits; cursed be the one that thinks it can get rich by planting or digging or drilling for wealth.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

Poverty breeds despair. We know this. Despair breeds violence. We know this. In turbulent times, isn't it cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than to defend yourself against them later?

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.

Smack in the centre of contradiction is the place to be.

Laughter is eternity if joy is real.

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.

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 job of art is to chase ugliness away.

The great gifts of models are not that they're more beautiful than the next person, it's that they're able to be photographed and not be self-conscious.

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

You don't become an 'artist' unless you've got something missing somewhere. Blaise Pascal called it a God-shaped hole. Everyone's got one but some are blacker and wider than others. It's a feeling of being abandoned,cut adrift in space and time-sometimes following the loss of a loved one. You can never completely fill that hole-you can try with songs,family,faith and by living a full life...but when things are silent, you can still hear the hissing of what's missing.

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

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.

As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It's the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.

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

There's a point where you find yourself tiptoeing as an artist, and then you know that you're in the wrong place.

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.

Selling out is doing something you don't really want to do for money. That's what selling out is.

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

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.

I will admit that we are attracted to issues that unify people rather than divide them.

I'm a musician. I write songs. I just hope when the day is done I've been able to tear a little corner off of the darkness.

When those people get up at the Grammys and say, "I thank God", I always imagine God going, "Oh, don't, please don't thank me for that one. Please, oh, that's an awful one! Don't thank me for that - that's a piece of crap !"

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

Jesus, Jesus help me. I'm alone in this world.

Rock stars are good at making noise.

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.

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

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.

At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It's a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

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 wouldn't run for President. I wouldn't want to move to a smaller house.

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?'

The less you know, the more you believe.

Technology is huge; I wanted to learn about it. People might say that's odd, but I think it's odd if artists aren't interested in the world around them. I'm always chasing that.

I used to - my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I've always heard kind of melodies in my head.

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.