John Lennon Quotes

I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.

Of course it's difficult to know what the workers are really thinking because the capitalist press always only quotes mouthpieces like Vic Feather anyway.

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.

Music is everybody's possession.

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

It's pretty hard when you are Caesar and everyone is saying how wonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and the girls, it's pretty hard to break out of that, to say 'Well, I don't want to be king, I want to be real.'

Don't need a gun to blow your mind

We reckoned we could make it because there were four of us. None at us would've made it alone, because Paul wasn't quite strong enough, I didn't have enough girl-appeal, George was too quiet, and Ringo was the drummer. But we thought that everyone would be able to dig at least one of us, and that's how it turned out.

A very Merry ChristmasAnd a happy New YearLet's hope it's a good oneWithout any fear.

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.

Newspaper people have a habit of putting you in the front pages to sell their papers, and then after they've sold their papers and got big circulations, they say, 'Look at what we've done for you

We put a President up there, and then we set fire to him because he's not solving all our problems.

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!

When I was about twelve I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn't I don't care.

Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who can control me is me, and even that's barely possible.

I've always considered my work one piece and I consider that my work won't be finished until I am dead and buried and I hope that's a long, long time.

I just sat all night looking at him, saying, 'Wow, it's incredible.' When Yoko woke up, I told her, 'He's fine,' and we cried.

I only ever asked two people to work with me as a partner. One was Paul McCartney and the other Yoko Ono. Paul and me were the Beatles.

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

They'll never be able to forget us.

Control yourself. You'll spurt.

[Polythene Pam] was me, remembering a little event with a woman in Jersey, and a man who was England's answer to Allen Ginsberg, who gave us our first exposure - this is so long - you can't deal with all this. You see, everything triggers amazing memories. I met him when we were on tour and he took me back to his apartment and I had a girl and he had one he wanted me to meet. He said she dressed up in polythene, which she did. She didn't wear jackboots and kilts, I just sort of elaborated. Perverted sex in a polythene bag. Just looking for something to write about.

You can manicure a cat but can you caticure a man?

I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn't go around shouting about it.

Before Cliff (Richard) and The Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.

My original idea for the cover was better - decapitate Paul - but he wouldn't go along with it.

Remember to let her into your heart.

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

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

Happiness Is A Warm Gun not about heroin. A gun magazine was sitting there with a smoking gun on the cover and an article that I never read inside called 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.' I took it right from there. I took it as the terrible idea of just having shot some animal.

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.

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

The main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity. If people can't face up to the fact of other people being naked or smoking pot, or whatever they want to do, then we're never going to get anywhere. People have got to become aware that it's none of their business and that being nude is not obscene. Being ourselves is what's important. If everyone practiced being themselves instead of pretending to be what they aren't, there would be peace.

Imagine ... Imagine no religion.

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.

The dream is over. I gotta get down to reality. The good old days is garbage.

Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.

I really thought that love would save us all.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

Love is real, real is love, Love is feeling, feeling love, Love is wanting to be loved. Love is touch, touch is love, Love is reaching, reaching love, Love is asking to be loved. Love is you, You and me, Love is knowing, We can be. Love is free, free is love, Love is living, living love, Love is needing to be loved.

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

The world went mad and used us as an excuse.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

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

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.

Life is what happens to you while you're planning on doing something else.

The idea of being a rock and roll musician sort of suited my talents and mentality. The freedom was great, but then I found out I wasn't free. I'd got boxed in...The whole Beatle thing is just beyond comprehension ... subconsciously I was crying for help.

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

It just was a gradual development over the years. I mean last year was 'all you need is love.' This year, it's 'all you need is love and peace, baby.' Give peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull together. You're all geniuses, and you're all beautiful. You don't need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you'll get it as soon as you like.

The reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up.

The pressures of being a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious parent, and really look to that little being's mental and physical health, is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid most of the time because it's too hard.

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.

In Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul got the record (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) from a French DJ. For three weeks in Paris we didn't stop playing it. We all went potty about Dylan.

How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery.

The only reason I went for that goal is that I wanted to say: 'Now, mummy-daddy, will you love me?'

People think the Beatles know what's going on. We don't. We're just doing it.

We've learned over the years that if we wanted we could write anything that just felt good or sounded good and it didn't necessarily have to have any particular meaning to us. As odd as it seemed to us, reviewers would take it upon themselves to interject their own meanings on our lyrics. Sometimes we sit and read other people's interpretations of our lyrics and think, 'Hey, that's pretty good.' If we liked it, we would keep our mouths shut and just accept the credit as if it was what we meant all along.

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.