John Lennon Quotes

page 3

228 Quotes to Inspire and Uplift with Wisdom and Wit

“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.”

“You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.”

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

“Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.”

“Love, Love, Love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”

“Without Jimmy (James) Dean the Beatles would never have existed.”

“I'm not going to sacrifice love, real love, for any *%@$n' war or any friend, or any business, because in the end you're alone at night.”

“I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.”

“Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles.”

“Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.”

“Happiness is just how you feel when you don't feel miserable.”

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

“I'd like to say "thank you" on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition.
Closing line of the Beatles' rooftop concert on (30 January 1969), this was also the last line of the Let It Be film and the album version of "Get Back"”

“Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace… we just need to declare it.”

“The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful, and so are you”

“I still believe that all you need is love.”

“So long ago, was it in a dream, was it just a dream?”

“One thing I can tell you is you have to be free. Come together, right now, over me.”

“It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think "Wow how did I get here?”

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

“A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it”

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

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

“All we are saying is give peace a chance!”

“You're all geniuses and you're all beautiful. You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace. Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like.”

“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.”

“The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you. When the spinning stops, that'll be the time to worry. Not before.”

“I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me.”

“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.”

“If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.”

“Very rich.”

“"Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear." — frequently attributed to Lennon, but entirely unsourced”

“This is ex-Beatle, John Lennon. I've been wanting to write you, but I guess I didn't really want to face reality. I never do this, this is why I take drugs. Reality frightens me and paranoids me. True, I have a lot of money… but basically, I'm afraid to face the problems of life. Let me begin to say, I regret that I said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. I don't even like myself anymore — guilt. My Cousin, Marilyn McCabe has tried to help me. She told me you were praying for me. … I want happiness. I don't want to keep up with drugs… Explain to me what Christianity can do for me. Is it phoney? Can He love me? I want out of Hell.
I am, I hate to say, under the influence of pills now. I can't stop. I only wish I could thank you for caring.”

“[In regard to conscription] "I was always thinking I could go to Southern Ireland if it came to it [but] I didn't know what I was going to do there, I hadn't thought that far."”

“I really thought that love would save us all.”

“I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus."”

“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 know you understand the little child inside of your man.”

“All kids draw and write poetry and everything, and some of us last until we're about eighteen, but most drop off at about twelve when some guy comes up and says, "You're no good." That's all we get told all our lives. "You haven't got the ability. You're a cobbler." It happened to all of us, but if somebody had told me all my life, "Yeah, you're a great artist," I would have been a more secure person.”

“You say you want a revolution,
Well, you know, we all want to change the world…
But when you talk about destruction,
Don't you know that you can count me out.”

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

“There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain”

“Christ, you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going,
they're going to crucify me.”

“First you must learn to smile as you kill.”

“Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can;
No need for greed or hunger –
A brotherhood of man;
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…”

“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.”

“Above all else never let people know how physically unattractive they actually are. Everyone deserves to believe they are beautiful.”

“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.”