Quotes By Bono

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The extraction of oil, coal and minerals brought, and still brings, a cost to the environment.

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.

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.

The less you know, the more you believe.

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

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

Rock music is niche.

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.

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.

America is not just a country, it's an idea, and real Americans are getting busy.

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.

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

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

The French are so into themselves that they don't even notice you.

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

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.

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.

I'm never nervous.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

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

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

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.