It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

There are two kinds of people in this world. ‚I‘ people and ‚we‘ people. I’ve always tried to be a ‚we‘ person.

Egos are never nice. I have been a victim of it a lot of times in my career. Whenever I have used it, I have failed.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

The truth doesn’t hurt unless it ought to.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

I’ve never professed to be anything but an average student.

I put my flaws on front street. So the world accepted my flaws, so I don’t have any flaws.

Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you are for empowers you.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‚sexy,‘ even before I knew what the word was.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

I’m an emotional person.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

I can’t very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

A lot of times, people make other people responsible for their joy: ‚You’re not making me happy, you’re not doing this, you’re not doing that.‘

Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores.

It’s a real strength for me that I’ve never minded the training process. It’s something I enjoy. I really like being in the gym or, certainly, on the field.

I was ill, and everyone could see it but me.

When we trust God more than our feelings, it confuses the devil. I mean, when he throws you his best shot and he can’t budge you from believing God, he won’t know what to do with you anymore.

Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don’t. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

The ‚morality of compromise‘ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

I kinda live where I find myself.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.