Irish singer & songwriter (1960- )
I'm wary of faith outside of actions. I'm wary of religiosity that ignores the wider world.
BONO
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Rolling Stone, November 3, 2005
Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who God is or if God exists--most will agree that if there is a God, God 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 in all manner of controversial stuff ... maybe, maybe not. But the one thing on which we can all agree, among all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.
BONO
On the Move
Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.
BONO
2004 PENN Address
Teenage kids have no sense of mortality -- yours or theirs.
BONO
Rolling Stone
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.
BONO
Rolling Stone, November 3, 2005
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
Rolling Stone, November 3, 2005
What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now?
BONO
2004 PENN Address
The glass is cut, the bottle run dry. Our love runs cold in the caverns of the night.
BONO
"Red Hill Mining Town"
Truth is beauty. That can be a hard thing to say, because some things are not so attractive on the surface. But by owning up to them, we change them--just by speaking them.
BONO
Oprah Magazine, April 2004
Rock music was most exciting when it was in the 45 [rpm single], when it was disciplined into a single. Whether it was the Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, Nirvana, the Beatles, the Stones. When the wind starts blowing in the hair, and it meanders off, you can get some great [stuff], but it doesn't interest me as much. The 45 is the pure rock to me. That is why I wanted to be in a band.
BONO
Chicago Tribune, May 13, 2005
I think belief in your script is essential. I am a salesman. I come from a long line of traveling salespeople on my mother's side. And I think I'm a good salesman of ideas, songs, melodies, if I believe in them.
BONO
The Charlie Rose Show, May 16, 2013
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. F*** 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!
BONO
statement before a live performance of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
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.
BONO
Rolling Stone, November 3, 2005
The fact is that this generation -- yours, my generation ... 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.
BONO
2004 PENN Address
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. 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.
BONO
remarks at National Prayer Breakfast, February 2, 2006
I could never take a chance of losing love to find romance.
BONO
"A Man and A Woman"
The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape.
BONO
2004 PENN Address
When I was 10, I learned what unlocks creativity. We were studying William Butler Yeats, one of the great poets of the 20th century, and my teacher explained that there was a period when Yeats had writer's block. I put my hand up in class and asked, "Why didn't he write about that?" It was like, "Oh, shut up." I've since learned that there's something to being truthful. The Scriptures say the truth will set you free. The truth is at the root of every piece of creativity. So if you're truthful about your situation, whatever it is as an artist--whether it's despair, whether it's hope, whether it's ambition--suddenly you're there.
BONO
Oprah Magazine, April 2004
I don't believe in riches, but you should see where I live.
BONO
"God Part II"
I have very little memory of my childhood, so as I raise my kids the memories come back in the most bizarre ways. Like you're singing your baby a song, and you don't know why you remember it, but somehow you do. You don't even know the tune, but you sing it anyway and think, How am I singing this song?
BONO
Oprah Magazine, April 2004