Bono citáty

Zdroj: [Kohut, Joe, Kohut, John J., Rockecy aneb Kniha rockových citátů, Ladislav Šenkyřík, Volvox Globator, Praha, 1996, 1, 153, 133, 80-7207-016-9]

Ale vždycky, když se pokouším skládat, tak to dopadne. Nejsem blbec. Uvědomuji si povrchnost rock and rollu. Ale uvědomuji si i jeho sílu.

Source: [Kohut, Joe, Kohut, John J., Rockecy aneb Kniha rockových citátů, Ladislav Šenkyřík, Volvox Globator, Praha, 1996, 1, 153, 83, 80-7207-016-9]

Zdroj: [80-7281-090-1, Vlastimil, Praha, Marek, 2002, Nová doba porodní: život před životem, porod jako zázrak, první tři minuty a jak dál : přirozený porod jako cesta ke společnosti bez násilí, Eminent, sdružení podnikatelů, 17]

PENN Address (2004)

"All I Want Is You"
Lyrics, Rattle And Hum(1988)
Kontext: 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

Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

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

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

PENN Address (2004)

Zdroj: On the Move

PENN Address (2004)
Kontext: It's not everywhere in fashion these days, Americanism. Not very big in Europe, truth be told. No less on Ivy League college campuses. But it all depends on your definition of Americanism.
Me, I'm in love with this country called America. I'm a huge fan of America, I'm one of those annoying fans, you know the ones that read the CD notes and follow you into bathrooms and ask you all kinds of annoying questions about why you didn't live up to that...
I'm that kind of fan. I read the Declaration of Independence and I've read the Constitution of the United States, and they are some liner notes, dude. As I said yesterday I made my pilgrimage to Independence Hall, and I love America because America is not just a country, it's an idea.

On Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview (2017)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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/
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: [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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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)
Kontext: 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.