Bono Quotes

PENN Address (2004)

Lyrics, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), Walk On

"If God Will Send His Angels"
Lyrics, Pop (1997)

Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

"All I Want Is You"
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: You say You want Diamonds on a Ring of Gold, Your Story to remain untold. Your Lovee not to go Cold

Source: Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas

About the album October (album) (1981) in a speech accepting induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame http://www.u2station.com/news/archives/2005/03/transcript_u2s.php (17 March 2005)

PENN Address (2004)

"One"
Lyrics, Achtung Baby (1991)

"North and South of the River"
Lyrics, Staring at the Sun (1997 EP)

"The Fly"
Lyrics, Achtung Baby (1991)

"A Man and A Woman"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Stand Up Comedy
Lyrics, No Line On The Horizon (2009)

"All I Want Is You"
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: You say you want diamonds on a ring of Gold, You say you want your story to remain untold. But all the promise we made from the Cradle to the Grave, When All I want is You

Source: On the Move

On Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview (2017)
Context: These last two albums mix up the personal and the political so that you don't know which one you're talking to. That's a kind of magic trick, and realizing that of course all the problems that we find in the exterior world are just manifestations of what we, you know, what we hold inside of us, in our interior worlds. The biggest fucker, the biggest asshole, the biggest, the most sexist we can be, the most selfish, mean, cunning, all those characters you are going to see them in the mirror. And that is where the job of transformation has to start first. Is that not what experience tells us?

PENN Address (2004)
Context: When the potatoes ran out, millions of Irish men, women and children packed their bags got on a boat and showed up right here. And we're still doing it. We're not even starving anymore, loads of potatoes. In fact if there's any Irish out there, I've breaking news from Dublin, the potato famine is over you can come home now. But why are we still showing up? Because we love the idea of America.
We love the crackle and the hustle, we love the spirit that gives the finger to fate, the spirit that says there's no hurdle we can't clear and no problem we can't fix.

"With or Without You"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: See the stone set in your eyes, see the thorn twist in your side. I wait for you

On reactions to his spray painting the fountain at the free concert he gave in San Francisco, in a Press conference (November 1987) http://www.u2source.com/2007/08/19/bono-press-conference-regarding-graffiti/
Context: It is fair to say that we overreacted a bit. … Its not really worth defending my action, I did it in the spirit of the concert, and I thought I did it in the spirit of the artist's work, and he agreed — but, in fact he didn't own his work anymore, as most artists are prone to, he'd sold it, and the City of San Francisco owned it, and they didn't like what I did at all. … Its a really wild thing, you know, you're in Rock n Roll band — you know, I happen to sell millions of records — people therefore think that makes you a responsible citizen — this is not true. … I think this is one of the more mild actions of tour-madness. … It's the music that is magical with U2. … I don't mind being arrested for putting on a free concert, but I don't want to be arrested for being a vandal. I am a vandal and I do regret what I did. I really do regret it. It was dumb.

Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: So now — cut to 1980. Irish rock group, who've been through the fire of a certain kind of revival, a Christian-type revival, go to America. Turn on the TV the night you arrive, and there's all these people talking from the Scriptures. But they're quite obviously raving lunatics.
Suddenly you go, what's this? And you change the channel. There's another one. You change the channel, and there's another secondhand-car salesman. You think, oh, my God. But their words sound so similar... to the words out of our mouths.
So what happens? You learn to shut up. You say, whoa, what's this going on? You go oddly still and quiet. If you talk like this around here, people will think you're one of those. And you realize that these are the traders — as in t-r-a-d-e-r-s — in the temple.

Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview (2017)
Context: I'm less unsure about taking political risks or social risks. When I became an activist, people were like, "Really?" But they eventually accepted that. Then I started to be interested in commerce and the machinery of what got people out of poverty and into prosperity. And then a few people said, "You can't really go there, can you?"
I said, "But if you are an artist, you must go there." You and I have had the conversation over the years: What can the artist do? What is the artist not allowed to do, and are there boundaries? Now, I would say to my younger self: "Experiment more and don't let people box you in. There is nothing you can't put on your canvas if it is part of your life."

PENN Address (2004)

"God Part II
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: Don't believe in Goldman, His type like a curse. Instant Karma's going to get him if I don't get him first

Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview (2017)
Context: [On the persecutions of Rohingya in Myanmar, and Aung San Suu Kyi‎'s lack of response to them] That is very hard, and I'm – I feel kind of nauseous about that. I have genuinely felt ill, because I can't quite believe what the evidence all points to. But there is ethnic cleansing. It really is happening, and she has to step down because she knows it's happening. I am sure she has many great reasons in her head why she is not stepping down. Maybe it's that she doesn't want to lose the country back to the military. But she already has, if the pictures are what we go by, anyway. The human rights that are being torched, the lives that are being burned out in Rakhine State are more important than a unity without them. … She should, at the very least, be speaking out more. And if people don't listen, then resign. This is all just really troubling. I am still confounded by it, actually. I am still confounded by it, actually. … Is it that we project onto people who we want them to be? We find somebody we like, and we tell ourselves that a person exists that is better than us. More able than us. A truer moral compass than us. We imbue them with all these qualities. We do that with people. I think I have had it done to me. People have their version of you, they project what they want to see on you. Maybe she was always a politician. She was not a saint. She was not some sort of savior. Maybe we were always wrong, and we just have to accept we were wrong. Or maybe something terrible has happened to her that we just don't know.

"Mysterious Ways"
Lyrics, Achtung Baby (1991)
Context: Johnny, take a dive with your sister in the rain
Let her talk about the things you can't explain
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.

Rattle and Hum (1987)
Context: Let me tell you something. I've had enough of Irish Americans who haven't been back to their country in twenty or thirty years come up to me and talk about the resistance, the revolution back home; and the glory of the revolution, and the glory of dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution! They don't talk about the glory of killing for the revolution. What's the glory of taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory of bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old-age-pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day? Where's the glory in that? To leave them dying, or crippled for life, or dead, under the rubble of the revolution that the majority of the people in my country don't want. No more! Sing No more! <!-- Variant transcription: Now let me tell you something, I've had enough of Irish Americans who haven't been back to their country, in 20 or 30 odd years, come up to me and talk about the Resistance, the Revolution back home, and the glory of the Revolution, and the glory of dying for the Revolution. Fuck the Revolution! They don't talk about the glory of killing for the Revolution. What's the glory, in taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory, in bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old age pensioners, the medals taken out and polished up for the day, where's the glory in that? To leave them dying, or crippled for life, or dead, under the rubble of the Revolution — that the majority of the people in my country, don't want! Say "no more!" No more! No more! Wipe your tears away!

PENN Address (2004)
Context: I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now, you don't see it on TV, irony is on heavy rotation, the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke. I've tried them all out but I'll tell you this, outside this campus — and even inside it — idealism is under siege beset by materialism, narcissism and all the other isms of indifference. Baggism, Shaggism. Raggism. Notism, graduationism, chismism, I don't know. Where's John Lennon when you need him?

"If God Will Send His Angels"
Lyrics, Pop (1997)
Context: If God will send his angels
I sure could use them here right now
Well if God would send his angels
And I don't have to know how.

"Red Hill Mining Town"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: We're wounded by fear, injured in doubt. I can lose myself, You I can't live without

"Bullet The Blue Sky"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: From the stinging rain comes a Rattle and hum. See the face of fear running scared in the valley below

"God Part II
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: Don't believe them when they tell me there ain't no cure. The Rich stay healthy, the Sick stay poor

In an interview to the World Association of Newspapers for World Press Freedom Day (3 May 2004)
Context: It's an amazing thing to think that ours is the first generation in history that really can end extreme poverty, the kind that means a child dies for lack of food in its belly. That should be seen as the most incredible, historic opportunity but instead it's become a millstone around our necks. We let our own pathetic excuses about how it's "difficult" justify our own inaction. Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don't have is the will, and that's not a reason that history will accept.

Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: Don't believe in the 60's, the Golden age of Pop. You glorify the past, when the Future dries up

"God Part II

"I still haven't found what I'm looking for"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: I have climbed highest mountains, I have run through the field, only to be with you. I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls, only to be with you. But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: I'm wary of faith outside of actions. I'm wary of religiosity that ignores the wider world. In 2001, only seven percent of evangelicals polled felt it incumbent upon themselves to respond to the AIDS emergency. This appalled me. I asked for meetings with as many church leaders as would have them with me. I used my background in the Scriptures to speak to them about the so-called leprosy of our age and how I felt Christ would respond to it. And they had better get to it quickly, or they would be very much on the other side of what God was doing in the world.
Amazingly, they did respond. I couldn't believe it. It almost ruined it for me — 'cause I love giving out about the church and Christianity. But they actually came through: Jesse Helms, you know, publicly repents for the way he thinks about AIDS.
I've started to see this community as a real resource in America. I have described them as "narrow-minded idealists." If you can widen the aperture of that idealism, these people want to change the world. They want their lives to have meaning.

Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview (2017)
Context: I'm less unsure about taking political risks or social risks. When I became an activist, people were like, "Really?" But they eventually accepted that. Then I started to be interested in commerce and the machinery of what got people out of poverty and into prosperity. And then a few people said, "You can't really go there, can you?"
I said, "But if you are an artist, you must go there." You and I have had the conversation over the years: What can the artist do? What is the artist not allowed to do, and are there boundaries? Now, I would say to my younger self: "Experiment more and don't let people box you in. There is nothing you can't put on your canvas if it is part of your life."

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)
Context: I presume the reason for this gathering is that all of us here — Muslims, Jews, Christians — all are searching our souls for how to better serve our family, our community, our nation, our God.
I know I am. Searching, I mean. And that, I suppose, is what led me here, too.
Yes, it's odd, having a rock star here — but maybe it's odder for me than for you. You see, I avoided religious people most of my life. Maybe it had something to do with having a father who was Protestant and a mother who was Catholic in a country where the line between the two was, quite literally, a battle line. Where the line between church and state was... well, a little blurry, and hard to see.

"I still have'nt found what I'm looking for"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: I have spoke with the tongue of Angels, I have held the hand of The Devil. It was warm in the night, I was cold as a stone

"All I Want Is You"
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: You say You'll give Me eyes in a moon of Blindness, a River in a time of dryness.

Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: We could defend ourselves. But even though some of us became pretty good at violence ourselves, others didn't. They got the shit kicked out of 'em. I thought that was kind of normal. I can remember incredible street battles. I remember one madster with an iron bar, just trying to bring it down on my skull as hard as he possibly could, and holding up a dustbin lid, which saved my life. Teenage kids have no sense of mortality — yours or theirs.

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)
Context: I close this morning on … very... thin... ice.
This is a dangerous idea I've put on the table: my God vs. your God, their God vs. our God... vs. no God. It is very easy, in these times, to see religion as a force for division rather than unity.
And this is a town — Washington — that knows something of division.
But the reason I am here, and the reason I keep coming back to Washington, is because this is a town that is proving it can come together on behalf of what the Scriptures call the least of these.
This is not a Republican idea. It is not a Democratic idea. It is not even, with all due respect, an American idea. Nor it is unique to any one faith.
"Do to others as you would have them do to you." [Luke 6:30] Jesus says that.
"Righteousness is this: that one should... give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for the emancipation of the captives." The Koran says that. [2.177]
Thus sayeth the Lord: "Bring the homeless poor into the house, when you see the naked, cover him, then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring fourth, then your Lord will be your rear guard." The Jewish scripture says that. Isaiah 58 again.

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)
Context: Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.
Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.
I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill... I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff... maybe, maybe not... But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.
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.

On his sunglasses; Imelda Marcos famously had a huge collection of shoes.
Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: I'm the Imelda Marcos of sunglasses.... Very sensitive eyes to light. If somebody takes my photograph, I will see the flash for the rest of the day. My right eye swells up. I've a blockage there, so that my eyes go red a lot. So it's part vanity, it's part privacy and part sensitivity.

PENN Address (2004)
Context: We used to wake up in the morning and the mist would be lifting we'd see thousands and thousands of people who'd been walking all night to our food station were we were working. One man — I was standing outside talking to the translator — had this beautiful boy and he was saying to me in Amharic, I think it was, I said I can't understand what he's saying, and this nurse who spoke English and Amharic said to me, he's saying will you take his son. He's saying please take his son, he would be a great son for you. I was looking puzzled and he said, "You must take my son because if you don't take my son, my son will surely die. If you take him he will go back to Ireland and get an education." Probably like the ones we're talking about today. I had to say no, that was the rules there and I walked away from that man, I've never really walked away from it. But I think about that boy and that man and that's when I started this journey that's brought me here into this stadium.
Because at that moment I became the worst scourge on God's green earth, a rock star with a cause. Christ! Except it isn't the cause. Seven thousand Africans dying every day of preventable, treatable disease like AIDS? That's not a cause, that's an emergency.

"Stranger in a Strange Land"
Lyrics, October (1981)
Context: I watched the way it was
The way it was when he was with us
And I really don't mind
Sleeping on the floor
But I couldn't sleep after what I saw
I wrote this letter to tell you
The way I feel.

PENN Address (2004)
Context: Don't get me too excited because I use four letter words when I get excited.
I'd just like to say to the parents, your children are safe, your country is safe, the FCC has taught me a lesson and the only four letter word I'm going to use today is P-E-N-N. Come to think of it 'Bono' is a four-letter word. The whole business of obscenity — I don't think there's anything certainly more unseemly than the sight of a rock star in academic robes. It's a bit like when people put their King Charles spaniels in little tartan sweats and hats. It's not natural, and it doesn't make the dog any smarter.

Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there's a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in "straw poverty"; i. e., the story of Christ makes sense to me. … As an artist, I see the poetry of it. It's so brilliant. That this scale of creation, and the unfathomable universe, should describe itself in such vulnerability, as a child. That is mind-blowing to me. I guess that would make me a Christian. Although I don't use the label, because it is so very hard to live up to. I feel like I'm the worst example of it, so I just kinda keep my mouth shut. … I try to take time out of every day, in prayer and meditation. I feel as at home in a Catholic cathedral as in a revival tent. I also have enormous respect for my friends who are atheists, most of whom are, and the courage it takes not to believe.

"Red Hill Mining Town"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: The Glass is cut, The Bottle run dry. Our love runs cold in the caverns of the night

On his sunglasses; Imelda Marcos famously had a huge collection of shoes.
Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: I'm the Imelda Marcos of sunglasses.... Very sensitive eyes to light. If somebody takes my photograph, I will see the flash for the rest of the day. My right eye swells up. I've a blockage there, so that my eyes go red a lot. So it's part vanity, it's part privacy and part sensitivity.

"Where the streets have no name"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: 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 plains, Where the streets have no names

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)
Context: It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry with this. Jesus is a young man, he's met with the rabbis, impressed everyone, people are talking. The elders say, he's a clever guy, this Jesus, but he hasn't done much... yet. He hasn't spoken in public before...
When he does, his first words are from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," he says, "because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord's favour, the year of Jubilee. [Luke 4:18]
What he was really talking about was an era of grace — and we're still in it.

On reactions to his spray painting the fountain at the free concert he gave in San Francisco, in a Press conference (November 1987) http://www.u2source.com/2007/08/19/bono-press-conference-regarding-graffiti/
Context: It is fair to say that we overreacted a bit. … Its not really worth defending my action, I did it in the spirit of the concert, and I thought I did it in the spirit of the artist's work, and he agreed — but, in fact he didn't own his work anymore, as most artists are prone to, he'd sold it, and the City of San Francisco owned it, and they didn't like what I did at all. … Its a really wild thing, you know, you're in Rock n Roll band — you know, I happen to sell millions of records — people therefore think that makes you a responsible citizen — this is not true. … I think this is one of the more mild actions of tour-madness. … It's the music that is magical with U2. … I don't mind being arrested for putting on a free concert, but I don't want to be arrested for being a vandal. I am a vandal and I do regret what I did. I really do regret it. It was dumb.

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)
Context: There is a continent — Africa — being consumed by flames.
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 to — to put the fire out in Africa.
History, like God, is watching what we do.

"I still have'nt found what I'm looking for"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: I believe in the Kingdom come, then all the colours will bleed into one. Bleed into one. But yes I'm still running

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)
Context: It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry with this. Jesus is a young man, he's met with the rabbis, impressed everyone, people are talking. The elders say, he's a clever guy, this Jesus, but he hasn't done much... yet. He hasn't spoken in public before...
When he does, his first words are from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," he says, "because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord's favour, the year of Jubilee. [Luke 4:18]
What he was really talking about was an era of grace — and we're still in it.

PENN Address (2004)
Context: There's a truly great Irish poet. His name is Brendan Kennelly, and he has this epic poem called the Book of Judas, and there's a line in that poem that never leaves my mind, it says: "If you want to serve the age, betray it." What does that mean, to betray the age?
Well to me betraying the age means exposing its conceits, it's foibles; it's phony moral certitudes. It means telling the secrets of the age and facing harsher truths.

PENN Address (2004)
Context: America is an idea, but it's an idea that brings with it some baggage, like power brings responsibility. It's an idea that brings with it equality, but equality even though it's the highest calling, is the hardest to reach. The idea that anything is possible, that's one of the reasons why I'm a fan of America. It's like hey, look there's the moon up there, lets take a walk on it, bring back a piece of it. That's the kind of America that I'm a fan of.

"God Part II"
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: 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.

"If God Will Send His Angels"
Lyrics, Pop (1997)
Context: And I don't need to know why
And I don't want to promise
Where do we go
Where did you go
And I don't want to lie
I just know that I need to...
Love.

PENN Address (2004)
Context: I didn't expect change to come so slow, so agonizingly slow. I didn't realize that the biggest obstacle to political and social progress wasn't the Free Masons, or the Establishment, or the boot heel of whatever you consider 'the Man' to be, it was something much more subtle. As the Provost just referred to, a combination of our own indifference and the Kafkaesque labyrinth of 'no's you encounter as people vanish down the corridors of bureaucracy.

In an interview to the World Association of Newspapers for World Press Freedom Day (3 May 2004)
Context: It's an amazing thing to think that ours is the first generation in history that really can end extreme poverty, the kind that means a child dies for lack of food in its belly. That should be seen as the most incredible, historic opportunity but instead it's become a millstone around our necks. We let our own pathetic excuses about how it's "difficult" justify our own inaction. Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don't have is the will, and that's not a reason that history will accept.

PENN Address (2004)
Context: The scale of the suffering and the scope of the commitment they often numb us into a kind of indifference. Wishing for the end to AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa is like wishing that gravity didn't make things so damn heavy. We can wish it, but what the hell can we do about it?
Well, more than we think. We can't fix every problem — corruption, natural calamities are part of the picture here — but the ones we can we must. The debt burden, as I say, unfair trade, as I say, sharing our knowledge, the intellectual copyright for lifesaving drugs in a crisis, we can do that. And because we can, we must. Because we can, we must. Amen.

"God Part II"
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Context: I don't believe in rape. But everytime She passes by, wild thoughts escape

"Red Hill Mining Town"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: Our Love has slowly slipped away, Our Love has seen its better day