As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

The less you know, the more you believe.

Rock 'n' roll is ridiculous. It's absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we're wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.

It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

It's stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

Ethiopia didn't just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, 'Would you take my son with you?' He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die.

So what we're talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we're facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We're standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It's very real. It's very strong.

Marriage is this grand madness, and I think if people knew that, they would perhaps take it more seriously.

Overcoming my dad telling me that I could never amount to anything is what has made me the megalomaniac that you see today.

I think ABBA have a pure joy to their music and that's what makes them extraordinary.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

The great moments of rock 'n' roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we're a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn't being ironic.

Selling out is doing something you don't really want to do for money. That's what selling out is.

Rock music is niche.

You know, God has some really weird kids, and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.

So you cannot, as a Christian, walk away from Africa.

God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

Anyone that's involved in development has discovered that all the good work that's been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

Africa will thrive.

I'm never nervous.

You've got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that's why they're so relatable.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It's often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

But more than anything else, for the British folks Irish people were all terrorists. So when we went to Britain, it was always a lot of resistance to U2. And that's why we came to America.

Particularly conservative Christians, I was very angry that they were not involved more in the AIDS emergency.

The French are so into themselves that they don't even notice you.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it's mad that people like me are listened to - you know, rap stars and movie stars.

It's a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That's where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

America is not just a country, it's an idea, and real Americans are getting busy.

The extraction of oil, coal and minerals brought, and still brings, a cost to the environment.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

Happy the country that lives on nothing but its wits; cursed be the one that thinks it can get rich by planting or digging or drilling for wealth.