Bob Geldof Quotes

1. But I think Prozac is a lethal drug, I've several friends just haven't made it by taking Prozac.

2. My depressions aren't so much…depression's too heavy a word. I get very down and y'know, boredom is the key to it as I've said.

3. (to the audience and world) Please. Please. Please. Give us as much money as we know you have. Thanks. 

4. (arguing with Margaret Thatcher) No, Prime Minister, nothing is as simple as dying.






5. Well, a sort of epiphany: I was in a great band. And it's very cool to be at 53 and realize that when you were a kid you were in a great band.

6. This is the most important tour in Ireland since the Rats because I've built up a body of songs, since we split, as a solo artist.

7. (on live TV at Live Aid) People are dying NOW. Give us the money NOW.

8. Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.



9. The lingua franca of the planet is not English, it's pop music.

10. And these persons aren't playing for the benefit of their health. They're playing for the benefit of other persons' health. So get your money out now. 


11. When I hit 11 so did the careers of Dylan and the Stones. A year later it was the Who and the Kinks.

12. (on Bono at Live Aid) I actually didn't want him on the stage, 'cause his haircut at the time was so appalling.

13. (on Live Aid) If there's a problem, you have to go out and solve it.

14. I was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined.



15. I'd always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was in a great band. It was always a collective thing.

16. (on Africa) Not the Dark Continent. This is the Luminous Continent.


17. And whereas women had to fight to find their way into the workforce, men are now fighting to reclaim their place in the family structure.

18. (on Live Aid) I've just realized that today is the best day of my life. Now I'm going home to sleep. 

19. My medals! I'm a Chevalier, a knight, a sheikh and a Prince Tuareg in Western Sudan. I look like Idi Amin when I've got them all on.

20. It went beyond idealism and that ridiculous term activism, which basically means talking about something but doing nothing. We made giving exciting.

21. Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American President for Africa. But it's empirically so.



22. Divorce is a by-product of the fact that maybe the nuclear unit is gone.

23. (on Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence) They thought they were Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. In fact, they were more like Tom and Jerry.


24. Everything that's rock n roll is ever meant to be is happening now. I need to get over the shock that that thing is actually happening and that thousands of millions of people around the world are watching.

25. You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since (U.S. President) Kennedy.

26. 90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What's going on? What's the great discontent at the heart of it?

27. I will be extremely active in trying to get these people thrown out of office.




28. I do think I feel it but you don't think you are cause at a certain time you are no age but you don't think you are anything. You feel the life you have lived. I feel that. It's been a long fifty years.

29. I'm sure I'm very difficult to live with because of my make-up and personality.

30. It's like you asked me about the depression thing: you grope towards an understanding of whatever it is your going through, and it's not personal, there are forces in play around you, and you seek to understand them and that way you can go on.



31. Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.

32. If we can get the domestic heat to such a temperature, just possibly we can reach down that ladder and say: "come on dudes, I'll give you a hand up".




33. (Geldof's reasons for joining a rock band) To get rich, to get famous and to get laid. 

34. Men who are not given any voice in this because of the secret nature of the courts, what they're left with is dressing up ridiculously, but at least using humor to try and draw attention to their kids.




35. If you were a pretty boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older.

36. Those songs are about getting out; they're not about getting out of family. It wasn't about how family life was curtailing because I didn't know family life.

37. I don't think anyone sets out to malign poor people but certainly that's what we do through organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

38. Music can't change the world.


39. I understand this is a process but the process should have been accelerated and added to at the UN.

40. But if somebody dies, if something happens to you, there is a normal process of depression, it is part of being human, and some people view it as a learning experience etc.

41. We live in a broken world which has never been healthier, wealthier or bizarrely, free of conflict, but some 500 kilometers south of here they die of want...It's not only intellectually absurd, but also morally repulsive.


42. Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me.

43. Paul, join the club, dude. It's not that hard.





44. It's really very simple, Governor. When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you're going to get it to these people.

45. Music is something I must do, business is something I need to do, and Africa is something I have to do. That's the way it breaks down in my life.

46. You can't trust politicians. It doesn't matter who makes a political speech. It's all lies - and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.

47. Playing live is the thing I love doing best.


48. Italy…is the least generous of the developed world with regard to aid and that is a shame. We ask the political class, left or right, to change that.

49. Physically I'm tired at the end of the day and quite glad to be reading in bed by midnight.

50. So when I got to 50 I just thought, Hold on: I'm thin. I've got my hair. I'm well off. I survived, you know.

51. There's no use in the prime minister coming to Scotland unless he's prepared to do this deal. Unless he's prepared he should stay home. Don't come. You're not welcome unless you're prepared to do something finally.

52. And part of that is, what is the point of having children if you don't have the privilege of bringing them up?

53. The girls are a complete joy and I love their passion. They argue with me like mad and I love that too.

54. Certainly, I think being depressed is absolutely part of the human condition, it has to be, if there's joy there's its opposite, and it's something you ride if you possibly can.

55. There is not a single extant study that supports all the arguments against men being with their children. It's absolute bollocks.


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