Bono Quotes
- All Quotes
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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.
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Essentially, I'm a very real person; good and bad. And the public image is one of being very good, I suppose. But one of the reasons I'm attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism, is because naturally, I'm the guy that would not turn the other cheek - but, when people see you're attracted to that, they think you are that.
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You've got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.
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These are hard subjects to talk about because you can sound like such a dickhead. I'm the sort of character who's got to have an anchor. I want to be around immovable objects. I want to build my house on a rock, because even if the waters are not high around the house, I'm going to bring back a storm. I have that in me. So it's sort of underpinning for me.
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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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So you cannot, as a Christian, walk away from Africa.
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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.
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Religion can be the enemy of God. It's often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.
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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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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.
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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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Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill for inspiration/and then sing about the grief.
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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.
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It's stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.
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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.
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There's nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is.
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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?'
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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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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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My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love.
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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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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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Overcoming my dad telling me that I could never amount to anything is what has made me the megalomaniac that you see today.
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U2's best work has always been when we didn't know what we're doing.