Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

To understand the power of the priesthood, we must know its limitations.

If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

America is just downright mean.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

Obama has succeeded in descending even below George W. Bush in approval in the Arab world. It’s minuscule, few percent.

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

I had just as much support from Republicans as I did Democrats when I ran for president. But I should have organized the Democratic Party to get me re-elected.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

As president, I’m committed to making Washington work better and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies… if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

Trump just looks stupid trying to appeal to blacks and Latinos.

The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal they have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

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

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

I don’t think I would run for president.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

There’s only one person in this race who will be there, who’s always been there for you, and that’s Hillary Clinton’s life story.

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

The truth of the matter is that Iran is a cancer.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

A good Catholic meddles in politics, offering the best of himself, so that those who govern can govern. But what is the best that we can offer to those who govern? Prayer!

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.