There's no one quite like Bono.
Musician, activist, and all-around amazing human, Bono has inspired people around the world with his music and his message of hope and peace.
He is the lead singer of the band U2 and has been using his fame to fight for social justice since the early 1980s.
As the founder of ONE and (RED), Bono has played a significant role in persuading policymakers and corporations to allocate huge swaths of money toward solving some of the most important issues facing the world.
In honor of his birthday (and because his mission-driven work is so admirable), we've collected some of our favorite quotes from him.
Whether you’re a diehard U2 fan, only know his music from the time Apple forced their album onto your phone, or have been influenced by Bono’s humanitarian efforts, may these quotes leave you feeling inspired to make a difference.
The Best Quotes From Bono:
Famous Quotes
“Whenever you see darkness, there is extraordinary opportunity for the light to burn brighter.”
— Bono
“Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die.”
— Bono
“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.”
— Bono
“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.”
— Bono, in the book “Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas”
“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.”
— Bono
“It's not only joy as an act of defiance; it’s business as usual as an act of defiance. This is just: Do your thing.”
— Bono
On Change
“Music can change the world because it can change people.”
— Bono
“Pop music often tells you everything is OK, while rock music tells you that it's not OK, but you can change it.”
— Bono, On the Move
“Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud.”
— Bono
“We can't fix all problems but we must fix the ones we can.”
— Bono
“The world is more malleable than you think, and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape.”
— Bono
“I can't change the world but I can change the world in me.”
— Bono
“In the end it is certainly not celebrities or personalities who change the world… it is social movements.”
— Bono, at ONE and (RED)’s 10th-anniversary celebration
On Activism & Human Rights
“Peace is the opposite of dreaming. It’s built slowly and surely through brutal compromises and tiny victories that you don’t even see. It’s a messy business, bringing peace into the world.”
— Bono
“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.”
— Bono
“Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.”
— Bono, U2 By U2
“At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.”
— Bono
“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.”
— Bono, in the book “Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas”
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 its belly.
— Bono, at his 2004 PENN Address
“There were 700,000 people on the medication when we started (RED); now we’re at 15 million. The big issue right now is keeping people engaged. If we build on what we’ve done over the last 15 years we can control this epidemic… until we get a vaccine. Which we will do.”
— Bono, speaking about his organization, (RED), in 2016
“The frontier of national interest is no longer the national border. You may not be interested in the trouble on a far-off street or across the Mediterranean on the other side of the globe, but let me assure you, that trouble is interested in you. Our fate is a shared fate. But which fate will it be?”
— Bono, at the Munich Security Conference in 2017
On Faith
“Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Find out what God's doing. It's already blessed.”
— Bono
“You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that "as you reap, so you will sow" stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep shit. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace.”
— Bono
“Christians are hard to tolerate; I don’t know how Jesus does it”
— Bono
“Sometimes religion gets in the way of God.”
— Bono
“Honesty, vulnerability and a good amount of courageous faith allows you to cry out in your bewilderment and not lose your belief in the process. These things allow you to wrestle your faith rather than lose it.”
— Bono
On America
“I love America and I hate it. I'm torn between the two. I have two conflicting visions of America. One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy.”
— Bono
“[America] shaped the struggle for civil rights and women’s rights and gay rights. I don’t know how, but I seemed to know that America wasn’t just a country. I felt it was an idea, if not yet a fact.”
— Bono
“Even when it got messy. Even when it got wild. America isn’t classical music, America is punk rock, America is hip-hop. I had a sense of America’s wrestling with itself, caught in the act of becoming… becoming itself… becoming its better self.”
— Bono, after winning the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding
More Quotes
“In general people put too much faith in the rich, the famous, the politicians, and not enough faith in themselves.”
— Bono
“Perspective is the cure for depression.”
— Bono
“The right to be irresponsible and stupid is something I hold very dear. And luckily it is something I do well.”
— Bono
“Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.”
— Bono
“My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.”
— Bono
“The ones whose light will remain with me long after they have burnt out are the ones that had grace. Because it's rare that the gift comes with grace. Some of the biggest arseholes I've ever met are the most gifted. Because it's "pretty girl" syndrome. Being gifted is like being born beautiful. You don't have to work a day in a year in your life for it. You were born with it. In one sense, it's like blue blood, money, gift, or beauty. They are the things that should make you the most humble, because they are not the things you have earned. They are the things you were given. Yet, it is my experience that they male people the most spoiled. And the people who work the hardest, and who have overcome the most obstacles on their life, who have reason to beat their breasts are the most humble, sometimes. I can't get over that. it's bewildering to me. To make it through success and still have manners, to still have curiosity, intellectual curiosity, to still have some grace, to keep your dignity, that is really... rare.”
— Bono, in the book “Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas”
“In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.”
— Bono
“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.”
— Bono
“Feelings are much stronger than thoughts. We are all led by instinct, and our intellect catches up later”
— Bono
“To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.”
— Bono
“In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.”
— Bono
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