Bono Quotes

#1. Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill for inspiration/and then sing about the grief.

Bono

#2. I don't like the name, U2, actually.

Bono

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

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#4. Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud.

Bono

#5. 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.

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#6. Rock stars are good at making noise.

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#7. 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.

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#8. 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.

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#9. Laughter is eternity if joy is real.

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#10. God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm.

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#11. I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that's what makes them extraordinary.

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

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#13. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

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#14. But more than anything else, for the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, it was always a lot of resistance to U2. And that's why we came to America.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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#21. In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they learned to swim

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#22. If your heart was hard, that would be better / You could only break it once or twice / After that it would be rid of blood and you could let it turn to ice.

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#23. 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.

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#24. What we're about in this band, I hope ... is that we put people before ideas.

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#25. So you cannot, as a Christian, walk away from Africa.

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#26. 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.

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#27. U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

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

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#29. I do see the good in people, but I also see the bad
I see it in myself. I know what I'm capable of. Good and bad. It's very imnportant that we make that clear. Just because I often find a way around the darkness doesn't mean tjat I don't know it's there. (Bono)

Bono

#30. Perspective is the cure for depression.

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#31. 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.

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#32. It's not only joy as an act of defiance; it's business as usual as an act of defiance. This is just: Do your thing.

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#33. Mandela's heroism is the heroism of a man who suffered so badly for what he thought of as freedom. And yet when he had the upper hand he has this incredible self-control and these incredible leadership qualities.

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#34. When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

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#35. People rid the room of argument until they have no one left - except people who agree with them. It is understandable. But I like a good argument.

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#36. If you stop taking chances, you'll stay where you sit. You won't live any longer, but it'll feel like it.

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#37. 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.'

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#38. 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.

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#39. The human heart is greedy; it will use religion, color, or any other excuse to justify its greed. Blame the human heart.

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#40. I'm never nervous.

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

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#42. Religion often gets in the way of God.

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#43. 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.

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#44. 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.

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#45. It's not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It's not an accident. That's a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions.

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#46. 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.

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#47. I think 'Invisible' is a great song, but I don't know how accessible it is.

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#48. Happiness is for those who don't really need it. So I can live without happiness.

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#49. 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.

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#50. I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found what I'm kooking for

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#51. 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.

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#52. One Life, with each other, Sisters, Brothers...

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#53. 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.

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#54. Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.

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#55. I don't believe the devil, I don't believe his book, but the truth is not the same without the lies he made up

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#56. There is a root arrogance in any writer; a hugely arrogant assumption that anyone is going to listen to them.

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#57. Contrary to reports, this boy is not a billionaire or going to be richer than any Beatle ... and not just in the sense of money, by the way; the Beatles are untouchable - those billionaire reports are a joke.

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

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

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#60. But there is a difference between cozying up to power and being close to power.

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#61. Whenever I see grace, I'm moved.

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

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#63. Facts, like people, want to be free - and when they're free, liberty is usually around the corner.

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#64. If I don't understand it, it must be art.

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#65. David was "a star, the Elvis of the Bible." An unusually for such a rockstar with his lust for power, lust for women, lust for life, he had humility of one who knew his gift work harder than he ever would.

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#66. 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.

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#67. The right to be irresponsible and stupid is something I hold very dear. And luckily it is something I do well.

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#68. Pop music often tells you everything is OK, while rock music tells you that it's not OK, but you can change it.

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#69. 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.

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#70. 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.

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#71. Music can change the world because it can change people.

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#72. 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.

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#73. 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.

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#74. 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.

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#75. 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.

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#76. Even though I'm a believer, I still find it really hard to be around other believers. They make me nervous, they make me twitch. I sorta watch my back.

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#77. 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.

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#78. The reason I like the game chess is because each move has countless repercussions, but you're in charge of them. And it's your ability to see into the future and the effects of the decisions you've made that males you either a good or not a good chess player. It's not luck.

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#79. I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

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#80. It's stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

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

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#82. Peace is the opposite of dreaming. It's built slowly and surely through brutal compromises and tiny victories that you don't even see. It's a messy business, bringing peace into the world.

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

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#84. 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.

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#85. It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw.

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#86. On the phone, it's about as intimate as it can get. The person's right in your ear. You got to be careful on the phone. You can leave yourself wide open

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#87. I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

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

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#89. Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die.

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#90. 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.

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#91. Ethiopia didn't just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, 'Would you take my son with you?' He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die.

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

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

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#94. To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal, if you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel - on your knees boy!

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#95. I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did - or did not do - to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

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#96. Rock music is niche.

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#97. And I can't tell the difference between ABC News, Hill Street Blues
And a preacher on the old time gospel hour
Stealing money from the sick and the old
Well the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister!

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#98. put flowers in the mud, baby.
Overground.

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#99. 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.

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#100. So what you're left with is: either Christ was who He said He was - the Messiah - or a complete nutcase. I mean, we're talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. - Bono on whether Jesus was Son of God was far-fetched.

Bono