Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: I was in my room listening on headphones on a tape recorder. It's very intimate. It's like talking to somebody on the phone, like talking to John Lennon on the phone. I'm not exaggerating to say that. This music changed the shape of the room. It changed the shape of the world outside the room; the way you looked out the window and what you were looking at.
I remember John singing "Oh My Love." It's like a little hymn. It's certainly a prayer of some kind — even if he was an atheist. "Oh, my love/For the first time in my life/My eyes can see/I see the wind/Oh, I see the trees/Everything is clear in our world." For me it was like he was talking about the veil lifting off, the scales falling from the eyes. Seeing out the window with a new clarity that love brings you. I remember that feeling.
Yoko came up to me when I was in my twenties, and she put her hand on me and she said, "You are John's son." What an amazing compliment!
Bono Quotes
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.
PENN Address (2004)
Context: Every era has its defining struggle and the fate of Africa is one of ours. It's not the only one, but in the history books it's easily going to make the top five, what we did or what we did not do. It's a proving ground, as I said earlier, for the idea of equality. But whether it's this or something else, I hope you'll pick a fight and get in it. Get your boots dirty, get rough, steel your courage with a final drink there at Smoky Joe's, one last primal scream and go.
CNN Larry King Weekend (2002)
Context: Ireland has a very different attitude to success than a lot of places, certainly than over here in the United States. In the United States, you look at the guy that lives in the mansion on the hill, and you think, you know, one day, if I work really hard, I could live in that mansion. In Ireland, people look up at the guy in the mansion on the hill and go, one day, I'm going to get that bastard. It's a different mind-set.
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.
PENN Address (2004)
Context: This is the straight truth, the righteous truth. It's not a theory, it's a fact. The fact is that this generation — yours, my generation — that can look at the poverty, we're the first generation that can look at poverty and disease, look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face, we can be the first to end this sort of stupid extreme poverty, where in the world of plenty, a child can die for lack of food in it's belly. We can be the first generation. It might take a while, but we can be that generation that says no to stupid poverty. It's a fact, the economists confirm it. It's an expensive fact but, cheaper than say the Marshall Plan that saved Europe from communism and fascism. And cheaper I would argue than fighting wave after wave of terrorism's new recruits.
National Prayer Breakfast (2006)
Context: 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. Seeing what religious people, in the name of God, did to my native land... and in this country, seeing God's second-hand car salesmen on the cable TV channels, offering indulgences for cash... in fact, all over the world, seeing the self-righteousness roll down like a mighty stream from certain corners of the religious establishment...
I must confess, I changed the channel. I wanted my MTV.
Even though I was a believer.
Perhaps because I was a believer.
“I wait, without you
With or without you, with or without you.”
"With or Without You"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: I wait for you
Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails she makes me wait
And I wait, without you
With or without you, with or without you.
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.
PENN Address (2004)
Source: U2 By U2
“Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die.”
"Crumbs from Your Table"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)
“See them burning crosses, see the flames get higher and higher”
"Bullet The Blue Sky"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
"Stay (Faraway,So Close)
Lyrics, Zooropa (1993)
“It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
She moves in mysterious ways.”
"Mysterious Ways"
Lyrics, Achtung Baby (1991)
"Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)
On the forming of the band U2
Rolling Stone interview (2005)
“You heard me in my tune when I just heard confusion.”
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)
"The Fly"
Lyrics, Achtung Baby (1991)
“It's not a hill it's a mountain, as you start out the climb”
I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Lyrics, No Line On The Horizon (2009)
PENN Address (2004)
“What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow”
"Beautiful Day"
Lyrics, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000)
Foreword to The End of Poverty (2005) by Jeffrey Sachs
"Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)
As quoted on Ronnie Drew (2008), talking about Irish folk band The Dubliners
“We're one but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other”
"One"
Lyrics, Achtung Baby (1991)
Lyrics, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), Walk On
“We're gonna make it all the way to the light,
but I know i'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight”
I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Lyrics, No Line On The Horizon (2009)
PENN Address (2004)
"Vertigo"
Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)
Statements made before a live performance of Sunday Bloody Sunday, a song first recorded on the U2 album War (1983)
Rattle and Hum (1987)
“It's a beautiful day…
Don't let it get away”
"Beautiful Day"
Lyrics, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000)
