Quotes by John Lennon

Love is all, love is new, love is all, love is you.

Love is real, real is love.

I want you to make love, not war, I know you've heard it before.

I hope someday you will join us and the world will live as one.

Love is the answer, and you know that for sure;
Love is a flower, you've got to let it grow.

War is over ... If you want it.

Whatever gets you through the night.

Everything is clearer when you're in love.

Oh sure. I dug the fame, the power, the money, and playing to big crowds. Conquering America was the best thing.

Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.

Pain is what we're in most of the time. And I think the bigger the pain the more gods we need.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there would be peace.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the '60s, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

Paranoia is just a heightened sense of awareness.

I would like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we've passed the audition.

It depends who they are. If it's Mick (Jagger) or the Old Guard as I call them, yeah, they're the Old Guard. Elton (John), David (Bowie) are the newies. I don't feel like an old uncle, dear, 'cause I'm not that much older than half of 'em, hehe.

You can only breathe out if you breathe in.

If you want to get peace, you can get it as soon as you like if we all pull together. ... Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like.

In the two books I wrote, even though they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's many knocks at religion and there is a play about a worker and a capitalist. I've been satirising the system since my childhood. I used to write magazines in school and hand them around.

I really had a chip on my shoulder, ... and it still comes out every now and then.

And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, 'That's it! Do that again!' In those days we really used to absolutely write like that -- both playing into each other's noses.

I had a lot of it in my day, but I don't like it. It's a dumb drug. Your whole concentration goes on getting the next fix. I find caffeine easier to deal with.

I'm cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I'm not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That's why I really don't want to be labeled a cynic.

We're not disinterested in politics. It's just that politicians are disinteresting.

In Western-style Communism we would have to create an almost imaginary workers' image of themselves as the father-figure.

It seems that all revolutions end up with a personality cult -- even the Chinese seem to need a father-figure.

I don't purchase records. I do enjoy listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music.

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war -for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more.

People are just up tight because the kids are having fun and they didn't have the same freedom.

We should be trying to reach the young workers because that's when you're most idealistic and have least fear.

That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously because I think our opposition, whoever they may be in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humour.

Without Jimmy Dean the Beatles would never have existed.

In one way, I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things people didn't see. I always saw things in a hallucinatory way.

I've been reading Nikita Khrushchev Remembers. I know he's a bit of a lad himself -- but he seemed to think that making a religion out of an individual was bad; that doesn't seem to be part of the basic Communist idea. Still people are people, that's the difficulty.

I'm an Elvis fan because it was Elvis who really got me out of Liverpool.

I was a working-class macho guy who was used to being served and Yoko didn't buy that. From the day I met her, she demanded equal time, equal space, equal rights.

Imagine ... Imagine no religion.

One day at a time is all we do. One day at a time is good for you.

What does it mean when a person is such a pacifist that they get shot? I can never understand that.

All the revolutions have happened when a Fidel or Marx or Lenin or whatever, who were intellectuals, were able to get through to the workers. They got a good pocket of people together and the workers seemed to understand that they were in a repressed state.

My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.

We never write anything with themes. We just write the same rubbish all the time.

The whole thing died in my mind long before the rumpus started. We used to believe the Beatles myth just as much as the public and we were in love with them just the same way. But we were four individuals who eventually recovered our individualities after being submerged in a myth.

If The Beatles or the 60's had a message, it was 'Learn to swim. And once you've learned -- swim!

Tell the truth and make it rhyme.

I've never voted. I've never voted yet although I could have voted for the last ten years.

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of soap.

I don't expect you to understand after you've caused so much pain, but then again-you're not to blame; you're just human-a victim of the insane.

Music touching my soul, the spirit dance was unfolding.

My teacher asked me what I want to be when I grow up, I said happy. She told me I don't understand the assignment, I told her she doesn't understand life.

Paul and I know each other on a lot of different levels that very few people know about.

All this bit about angels and all the different religions, it's based on something. I think anything's possible. I believe in everything until it's disproved.

What I'm trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All those who are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in their mind. The acid dream is over, that is what I'm trying to tell them.

There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme.

You feel alone if you're the only one thinking 'wouldn't it be nice if there was peace and nobody was getting killed.' So advertise yourself that you're for peace if you believe in it.

The Beatles had gone beyond comprehension. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast. We were well into marijuana and nobody could communicate with us, because we were just glazed eyes, giggling all the time.

I'm a moldy moldy man I'm moldy thru and thru I'm a moldy moldy man You would not think it true I'm moldy til my eyeballs I'm moldy til my toe I will not dance I shyballs I'm such a humble Joe.

Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you.

I'd like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority.

I wanna hold your gland.

I didn't come after Elvis and Dylan, I've been around always. But if I see or meet a great artist, I love 'em.

Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe.

I'm not saying we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person, or God as a thing, or whatever it is. I just said what I said, and it was wrong, or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this.

I found I was having continually to please the sort of people I'd always hated when I was a child. This began to bring me back to reality.

I've got used to the fact -​ just about -​ that whatever I do is going to be compared to the other Beatles. If I took up ballet dancing, my ballet dancing would be compared with Paul's bowling.

There is nothing conceptually better than rock 'n' roll. No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on Whole Lot of Shaking for my money. Or maybe I'm like our parents: that's my period and I dig it and I'll never leave it.

It's weird not to be weird.

In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was.

If we took over Britain, then we'd have the job of cleaning up the bourgeoisie and keeping people in a revolutionary state of mind.

Don't let them fool you with dope and cocaine, can't do you know harm to feel your own pain.

It was my Fat Elvis period. I was eating and drinking like a pig. I was depressed and I was crying out for help. It's real. And I meant it.

It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken onstage.

I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever's going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.

I just like TV. I think to me, it replaced the fireplace when I was a child. They took the fire away and they put a TV in instead and I got hooked on it.

I think it's the best thing I've ever done. I think it's realistic, and it's true to the me that has been developing over the years. I like first-person music.

It's amazing how low you go to get high.

We gave up everything just to sit at your table.

I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it's fantastic. Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind you're left with great precision.

We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

I don't bother so much about the others' songs. For instance, I don't give a damn about how 'Something' is doing in the charts -- I watch 'Come Together' (the flip side) because that's my song.

I never listen to the radio. If it's bad, I make fun of it, and if it's good, I get jealous that I didn't think of it.

I know I hurt you then But that was way back when.

If everyone could just be happy with themselves and the choices people around them make, the world would instantly be a better place!

One more stage, one more limo, one more run for your life.

New York is what Paris was in the twenties... the center of the art world. And we want to be in the center. It's the greatest place on earth... I've got a lot of friends here and I even brought my own cash.

I can't remember anything without a sadness so deep that it hardly becomes known to me, so deep that its tears leave me a spectator of my own stupidity.

I believe in everything until it's disproved.

Art is only a way of expressing pain.

When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes and into my mind.

I want to be with my best friend. My best friend, my wife. Who could ask for anything more?

When I was singing about 'All You Need Is Love' I was talking about something I hadn't experienced.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.

Love means having to say you're sorry every fifteen minutes.

We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget.... They invented LSD to control people and what they did was give us freedom.

No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go.

Please don't spoil my day; I'm miles away and, after all, I'm only sleeping.

All of us growing up have come to terms with too much pain. Although we repress it, it's still there. The worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realising your parents do not need you in the way you need them.

I was different, I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me?

The establishment will irritate you -- pull your beard, flick your face -- to make you fight. Because once they've got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is non-violence and humor.

There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic.

I'm not claiming divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can. But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

We had one thing in common -- we were in love. But love is just a gift, and it doesn't answer everything and it's like a precious plant that you have to nurture and look after and all that.

Why don't people believe us when we say we're simply in love?

Violence begets violence, you know. And you can't kill off all the violent people or all the murderers. We'd have to kill off the government.

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We're pacifists, but I'm not sure what it means when you're such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that.

When you're drowning you don't think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I'm drowning and come and rescue me. You just scream.

We're playing those mind games together
Pushing the barriers, planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla.

There are places I'll remember All my life though some have changed Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain All these places have their moments With lovers and friends I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life I've loved them all.

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything.

I don't intend to be a performing flea any more. I was the dreamweaver, but although I'll be around I don't intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don't want to die at 40.

I'm a freakin' artist, man, not a (expletive) race horse.

There is a time to let things happen, and a time to make things happen. Life is what happens when you are making other plans.

I'm dissatisfied with every record the Beatles ever f***ing made. There ain't one of them I wouldn't remake.

Before Elvis there was nothing.

We're trying to sell peace, like a product, you know, and sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks. And it's the only way to get people aware that peace is possible, and it isn't just inevitable to have violence. Not just war -- all forms of violence.

There is no denying that we are still living in the capitalist world. I think that in order to survive and to change the world, you have to take care of yourself first. You have to survive yourself.

It came in a vision -- a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, 'From this day forward you are Beatles with an A.' Thank you Mister Man, they said, thanking him.

The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees; I want money.

Carrying The Beatles' or the Sixties' dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or The Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion.

Going to America increased the build up on me, especially as the war was going on there. In a way we'd turned out to be a Trojan horse. The 'Fab Four' moved right to the top and then sang about drugs and sex and then I got into more and more heavy stuff and that's when they started dropping us.

Free all the prisoners everywhere, all they want is truth and justice, all they need is love and care.

As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it's happening.

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom Let it be.

The first line (of I Am The Walrus) was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko.

I was the walrus, but now I am John. And so my friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over.

I am the eggman They are the eggmen! I am the walrus!

Well, I just want him to grow up happy. That's the main thing.

I am going into an unknown future, but I'm still all here, and still while there's life, there's hope.

I always was a rebel...but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted...and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not.

I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

It was very romantic. It's all in the song, The Ballad of John and Yoko. If you want to know how it happened, it's in there. Gibraltar was like a little sunny dream. I couldn't find a white suit -​ I had sort of off-white corduroy trousers and a white jacket. Yoko had all white on.

Make your own dream .I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you.

Yoko Ono was showing me some of these Haiku in the original. The difference between them and Long fellow is immense. Instead of a long flowery poem the Haiku would say 'Yellow flower in white bowl on wooden table' which gives you the whole picture.

We make her paint her face and dance
If she won't be a slave, we say that she don't love us
If she's real, we say she's trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she is above us.

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her, home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that she's too
unworldly to be our friend.

They hit you at school, they hate you if your clever, and they despise a fool.

There's room at the top they are telling you still, but first you must learn how to smile as you kill.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV.

Father, you left me, but I never left you.

Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends.

I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed.

Songwriting is like ... being possessed. You try to go to sleep but the song won't let you.

I'm really very embarrassed about my guitar playing, in one way, because it's very poor. I can never move but I can make a guitar speak.

You can go to church and sing a hymn, Judge me by the colour of my skin, You can live a lie until you die, One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside.

One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were ... It happened bit by bit, until ... you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand -- the people you hated when you were ten.

As a child I did a lot of imaginary bits, you know. It depends on the individual, I enjoyed then knocking the nail in, I enjoy knocking nails in walls to hang pictures up, but I also enjoy thinking 'I'm gonna do that' but I actually won't do it, I enjoy imagining doing things just as much.

I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.

Life happens whilst you're planning other things.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

I've withdrawn many times. Part of me is a monk, and part a performing flea! The fear in the music business is that you don't exist if you're not at Xenon with Andy Warhol.

I don't know if I want to record together again. I go off and on it... In the old days, when we needed an album, Paul and I got together and produced enough songs for it. Nowadays, there's three of us writing prolifically and trying to fit it all into one album.

Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group.

Look, I wasn't saying the Beatles are better than God or Jesus. I said 'Beatles' because it's easy for me to talk about Beatles. I could have said TV or the cinema, motor cars or anything popular and I would have gotten away with it.

I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.

In Baby You're A Rich Man the point was, stop moaning, you're a rich man and we're all rich, heh heh, baby!

You'd have to give people free rein to attack the local councils or to destroy the school authorities, like the students who break up the repression in the universities. It's already happening, though people have got to get together more.

That's the choice they allow you -- now the outlet is being a pop star, which is really what I'm saying on the album in 'Working class hero'. As I told Rolling Stone, it's the same people who have the power, the class system didn't change one little bit.

Everybody's talking about ministers, sinisters, banisters, and canisters, bishops, fishops, rabbis, and popeyes, bye-bye, bye-byes.

Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was.

If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

I felt an obligation even then to write a song that people would sing in the pub or on a demonstration. That is why I would like to compose songs for the revolution.

I used to hide my real emotions in gobbledegook, like in In His Own Write. When I wrote teenage poems, I wrote in gobbledegook because I was always hiding my real emotions from Mimi.

At the (record company) meeting Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do, so in the end I just said, 'I think you're daft. I want a divorce.'

You don't have to be a star to get a cheese sandwich. You just have to be first.

Only by trying on other people's clothes do we find what size we are.

I'll be a good boy, please make me well. I promise you anything, get me out of this hell. Cold turkey has got me on the run.

Love is a promise; love is a souvenir.

Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind possessing and caressing m.

How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?

The more reality we face, the more we realise that unreality is the main programme of the day. The more real we become, the more abuse we take, so it does radicalise us in a way, like being put in a corner. But it would be better if there were more of us.

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.

When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy.

Nobody loves you when you're down and out.

In 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds' I was visualizing Alice in Wonderland, an image of this female who would come and save me -- a girl with kaleidoscope eyes who would be the real love of my life. Lucy turned out to be Yoko.

Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.

Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, turn on and drop out, man -- because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you.

I dream in colour, and its always very surreal. My dream world is complete Hieronymus Bosch and Dali. I love it, I look forward to it every night.

When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.

It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love or how you love, it matters only that you love.

We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.

Love is like a flower -- you've got to let it grow.

There are no problems, only solutions.

You know the way people begin to look like their dogs? Well, we're beginning to look like each other.

There is an alternative to war. It's staying in bed and growing your hair.

I used to think it was mere homesickness, then I started getting it at home.

Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.