109 Quotes by Bono
Bono, born Paul David Hewson on May 10, 1960, in Dublin, Ireland, is a legendary singer, songwriter, and humanitarian. As the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band U2, he has captivated audiences around the world with his powerful voice, charismatic stage presence, and thought-provoking lyrics. Bono's music transcends genres and resonates with people of all walks of life, addressing themes of love, spirituality, social justice, and the complexities of the human experience. Beyond his musical talents, Bono is renowned for his activism and philanthropy. He has utilized his platform and influence to advocate for numerous causes, including the fight against poverty, disease, and social inequality.
Bono's dedication to making a positive impact on the world has led him to collaborate with world leaders, establish charitable organizations, and tirelessly raise awareness about pressing global issues. His unwavering commitment to using his voice for the greater good has earned him widespread respect and admiration. Bono's artistic and humanitarian contributions have cemented his status as an iconic figure in both the music industry and the realm of activism.
Bono Quotes
My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.
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.
To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater. (Meaning)
God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.
In general people put too much faith in the rich, the famous, the politicians, and not enough faith in themselves.
Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Find out what God's doing. It's already blessed.
When you align yourself with God's purpose as described in the Scriptures, something special happens to your life.
Music can change the world because it can change people.
Religion can be the enemy of God. It's often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.
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.
The job of art is to chase ugliness away.
Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.
Feelings are much stronger than thoughts. We are all led by instinct, and our intellect catches up later
I wish to begin again on a daily basis. To be born again every day is something that I try to do. And I'm deadly serious about that.
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.
Christians are hard to tolerate; I don’t know how Jesus does it
Pop music often tells you everything is OK, while rock music tells you that it's not OK, but you can change it.
It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw.
The less you know, the more you believe.
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.
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.
Perspective is the cure for depression.
The great moments of rock 'n' roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.
We can't fix all problems but we must fix the ones we can
You know, God has some really weird kids, and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.
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. That’s just a joke.
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. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.
Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud.
We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.
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.
It's stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.
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.
The most powerful idea that's entered the world in the last few thousand years - the idea of grace - is the reason I would like to be a Christian.
At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.
Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.
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?
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.
Laughter is eternity if joy is real.
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.
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.
God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm.
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.
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.
In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.
U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.
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.
When people say, you know, 'Good teacher,' 'Prophet,' 'Really nice guy'... this is not how Jesus thought of Himself. So you're left with a challenge in that, which is either Jesus was who he said he was or a complete and utter nut case. You have to make a choice on that.
Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.
The French are so into themselves that they don't even notice you.
There's a point where you find yourself tiptoeing as an artist, and then you know that you're in the wrong place.
Selling out is doing something you don't really want to do for money. That's what selling out is.
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.
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.
My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.
There's no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.
The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don't like it, actually.
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...
Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.
I'm never nervous when I go to meet heads of state. I feel they should be nervous, because they are the ones who'll be held accountable for the lives their decisions will impact the most.
Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it's mad that people like me are listened to - you know, rap stars and movie stars.
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.
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.
Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to 400 million of the world's poorest people.
Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.
The human heart is greedy; it will use religion, color, or any other excuse to justify its greed. Blame the human heart.
Sometimes religion gets in the way of God.
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?'
Rock stars are good at making noise.
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.
Marriage is this grand madness, and I think if people knew that, they would perhaps take it more seriously.
The extraction of oil, coal and minerals brought, and still brings, a cost to the environment.
If September 11th has taught us anything, it's certainly that the world has never been so interdependent. It is impossible now to be an island of prosperity in a sea of despair.
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.
I'm home a lot. Because I live in Ireland, we can live under the celebrity radar. I might go missing for a whole year.
U2's best work has always been when we didn't know what we're doing.
Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill for inspiration/and then sing about the grief.
I'm as skeptical as anyone would be about celebrities and causes - and I will dare to say to you that I don't think of myself as a celebrity per se.
Particularly conservative Christians, I was very angry that they were not involved more in the AIDS emergency.
The idea that there is one kind of African is of course ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads. Of course they are right to press for that issue, but so are we right, I believe, to argue for example that millions of children could and should be vaccinated.
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.
There was a moment when Prince did rock & roll with a sponge-y seductive sound. I think that's what was in our head for 'Get On Your Boots.' But actually, the song is much more punk rock.
What really turns me on about technology is not just the ability to get more songs on MP3 players. The revolution - this revolution - is much bigger than that. I hope, I believe. What turns me on about the digital age, what excites me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing.
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.
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.
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 right to be irresponsible and stupid is something I hold very dear. And luckily it is something I do well.
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.
Smack in the centre of contradiction is the place to be.
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.
Facts, like people, want to be free - and when they're free, liberty is usually around the corner.
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.
Facebook are an amazing team, a brilliant team. It's a technology that brings people together.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's still very difficult for me to rely. Your weakness, the blessing of your weakness is it forces you into friendships. The things that you lack, you look for in others.
We're starting our own religion at last. The Order of Frisbeetarians. We believe that when you die, your soul ascends to a rooftop and you can never get it back.
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.
There is a root arrogance in any writer; a hugely arrogant assumption that anyone is going to listen to them.
I will admit that we are attracted to issues that unify people rather than divide them.
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.
You've got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.
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.
I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.
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.
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 !"
Jesus, Jesus help me. I'm alone in this world.
Let's not bequeath the pop charts to just children.
― Bono Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
