John Lennon Quotes

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.

There's high, and then there's high, and to get really high
I mean so high that you can walk on the water, that high
that's where I'm goin'

I'm not really a career person; I'm a gardener, basically.

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

The more I see, the less I know for sure.

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.

And so this is Christmas...what have you done?

I thought of nothing else but rock 'n' roll; apart from sex and food and money
but that's all the same thing, really.

Whatever gets you through the night

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

A very Merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear.

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

rain, I don't mind

The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them.

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.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.

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.

For a long time I wasn't listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty. It would bring back memories I didn't want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I'm not alive 'cause I'm not making it. And if it was good, I hated it 'cause I wasn't doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious 'cause I could've done it better ...

I was stuck in the feeling that one did not
was not justified in being alive unless one was fulfilling other people's dreams, whether they were contractual dreams or the public's dreams, or fulfilling my own dreams and illusions about what I thought I was supposed to be, which, in retrospect, turned out to not be what I am.

Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

Getting out of one car and getting into another

Happiness is inside you, not with another person

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.

There are a lot of people walking around with long hair now and some trendy middle class kids in pretty clothes. But nothing changed except that we all dressed up a bit, leaving the same bastards running everything.

Music's all right John, but you'll never make a living out of it.

You're jeans are full of crap. You're full of beans, you're in you teens. You've lost your mama's road map.

I don't mind people putting us down, because if everybody really liked us, it would be a bore. You've got to have people putting you down. It doesn't give any edge to it if everybody just falls flat on their face saying, 'You're great.' We enjoy some of the criticisms as well, they're quite funny; some of the clever criticisms, not the ones that don't know anything, but some of the clever ones are quite fun.

The establishment irritates you - pull your beard, flick your face - to make you fight because once they've got you violent they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is non-violence and humour.

Speaking as somebody who's been in the drug scene, it's not something you can go on and on doing, you know. It's like drink, or anything, you've got to come to terms with it. You know, like too much food, or too much anything. You've got to get out of it. You're left with yourself all the time, whatever you do
you know, meditation, drugs or anything. But you've got to get down to your own god and your own temple in your head.

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.

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

We're crazy about this city. Los Angeles? That's just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for the trip to San Francisco.

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 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.

I don't stand back and judge - I do.

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.

People are just uptight because the kids are having fun. They didn't have the same freedom because they didn't take it; they just followed the lives laid down by their parents. And they're jealous of the people who didn't do that.

Creativity is a gift. It doesn't come through if the air is cluttered.

If people take any notice of what we say, we say we've been through the drug scene, man, and there's nothing like being straight.

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

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he's no longer God ... They'll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after Highway 64 (sic) and Blonde on Blonde, and even then it was because George (Harrison) would sit me down and make me listen.

I mean People come up and ask for autographs or say hi but they wont bug you.

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

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.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV

That love is all, that love is everyone
It is knowing, it is knowing

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

If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles.

Nothing happened in the sixties except that we all dressed up.

The world went mad and used us as an excuse.

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.

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.

What Can I Tell You about Myself which You Have Not Already Found Out from Those Who Do Not Lie?

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 wouldn't say I was a born writer; I'm a born thinker.

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

Araminta Ditch was always larfing. She woof larf at these, larf at thas. Always larfing she was. Many body peofle woof look atat her saying, 'Why does that Araminta Ditch keep larfing?' They could never understamp why she was ever larfing about the place. 'I hope she's not larfing at me,' some peokle would say, 'I certainly hope that Araminta Ditch is not larfing at me.
One date Araminta rose up out of her duffle bed, larfing as usual with that insaje larf peojle had come to know her form. 'Hee! Hee! Hee!' she larfed all the way down to breakfart. 'Hee! Hee! Hee!' she gurgled over the morman papiers. 'Hee! Hee! Hee!' continude Araminta on the buzz to wirk. This pubbled the passages and condoctor equally both. 'Why is that boot larfing all the time?' inqueered an elderberry passengeorge who trabelled regularge on that roof and had a write to know.
'I bet nobody knows why I am always larfing,' said Araminta to herself privately, to herself. 'They would dearly love to know why I am always larfing like this to myselve privately to myselve. I bet some peoble would really like to know.' She was right, off course, lots of peotle would.
Araminta Ditch had a boyfred who could never see the joke. 'As long as she's happy,' he said. He was a good man. 'Pray tell me, Araminta, why is it that you larf so readily.
Yeaye, but I am sorly troubled sometimes when thy larfter causes sitch tribulation and embarresment amongst my family and elders.' Araminta would larf all the

I've had the boyhood thing of being Elvis. Now I want to be with my best friend and my best friend is my wife. Who could ask for anything more?

If [Sean] doesn't see me a few days or if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of get a glimpse of him, or if I'm feeling depressed without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer afford to have artistic depressions. If I start wallowing in a depression, he'll start coming down with stuff, so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes I can't, because something will make me depressed and sure as hell he'll get a cold or trap his finger in a door or something, and so now I have sort of more reason to stay healthy or bright ...

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

When somebody is angry with us, we draw a halo around his or her head, in our minds. Does the person stop being angry then? Well, we don't know! We know, though, that when we draw a halo around a person, suddenly the person starts to look like an angel to us.

Meanings of all songs come after they are recorded. Someone else has to interpret them

If you want to be like the folks up on the hill, you have to learn to smile while you kill

[LSD] went on for years. I must have had a thousand trips. I used to just eat it all the time.

Life is what happens when you make other plans.

I believe time wounds all heels.

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

When I get older losing my hair many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out till quarter to three would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

I don't believe in yesterday, by the way.

Through Divination i received the name Matthew Edward Hall as the future prophet or savior. This is why i've left several messages to him in my songs. "Angel Baby," "Be My Baby," & "Tennessee" for example. I was correct about Paul, & Yoko. I'm sure i'll be correct about Matthew Edward Hall's great success. This is the only name i've ever received through divination. If Reincarnation is true, this may even be my next life.

Nothing will stop me, and whether I'm here or wherever I may be, I'll always have the same feelings, I'll say what I feel.

If you enjoyed the time you wasted, then it wasn't wasted time.

Before many black singers were still labouring under that problem of God; it was often 'God will save us'. But right through the blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain and also about sex, which is why I like it.

The Beatles were just a band that made it very, very big, that's all.

I don't believe in Elvis.

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.

People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie
``You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, ' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different
I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher

It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

People asking questions, lost in confusion, well I tell them there's no problem, only solutions.

Free as a bird
It's the next best thing to be
Free as a bird.
Home, home and dry
Like a homing bird I'll fly
As a bird on wings.
Whatever happened to
The life that we once knew?
Can we really live without each other?
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much?
It always made me feel so free.

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.

Love is you, you and me. Love is knowing we can be.

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 sat belonely

I sat belonely down a tree,
humbled fat and small.
A little lady sing to me
I couldn't see at all.

I'm looking up and at the sky,
to find such wondrous voice.
Puzzly puzzle, wonder why,
I hear but have no choice.

'Speak up, come forth, you ravel me',
I potty menthol shout.
'I know you hiddy by this tree'.
But still she won't come out.

Such softly singing lulled me sleep,
an hour or two or so
I wakeny slow and took a peep
and still no lady show.

Then suddy on a little twig
I thought I see a sight,
A tiny little tiny pig,
that sing with all it's might.

'I thought you were a lady'.
I giggle, - well I may,
To my suprise the lady,
got up - and flew away.

He laid it on George, me and our wives without telling us at a dinner party at his house. He was a friend of George's, and our dentist at the time. He just put it in our coffee or something. He didn't know what it was, it was just, 'It's all the thing,' with the middle-class London swingers. They had all heard about it and didn't know it was different from pot or pills. And they gave it to us, and he was saying, 'I advise you not to leave,' and we thought he was trying to keep us for an orgy in his house and we didn't want to know.

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

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.

Make love, not war.

Love is a promise; love is a souvenir ...

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.

It seems to me that the students are now half-awake enough to try and wake up their brother workers. If you don't pass on your own awareness then it closes down again.

I was bored on the 9th of Octover 1940 when, I believe, the Nasties were still booming us led by Madolf Heatlump (who only had one). Anyway they didn't get me. I attended to varicous schools in Liddypol. And still didn't pass
much to my Aunties supplies. As a member of the most publified Beatles my (P, G, and R's) records might seem funnier to some of you than this book, but as far as I'm conceived this correction of short writty is the most wonderfoul larf I've every ready.
God help and breed you all.

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.

I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable.

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme.

Life is what is happening today while you were planning tomorrow

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 love commercial music! I can dissect it and criticize it with any critic in the business. But without any thought, I just enjoy it. It's folk music. That's what I'm doing, folk music. I'm not intellectualizing it ... and making it into a phoney art form. I'm just doing the music I enjoy.