Paul McCartney Quotes (50 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Paul McCartney: 50 quotes 56 likes

Famous Paul McCartney Quotes

“I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.”

Paul McCartney

“Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, Tomorrow I'll miss you.”

Paul McCartney

“Sadness isn't sadness. It's happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They're balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It's life that's jumped off a tall cliff.”

Paul McCartney

Source: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999

“Think globally, act locally.”

Paul McCartney

“And what's the point of changing when I'm happy as I am?”

Paul McCartney

“You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.”

Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney Quotes about love

“What you do and what you love just becomes a part of you, if you're lucky.”

Paul McCartney

Source: Paul McCartney: The Waterstones Interview
December 2021
https://youtu.be/chROemnJfIo?t=2916

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Paul McCartney

"The End"; The last full song track of Abbey Road (1969) the last Beatles album to be recorded before the band broke up. (Let It Be was the last album released, but had been recorded earlier.)
Lyrics, The Beatles
Source: The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics

“Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs
And what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know
'Cause here I go again…”

Paul McCartney

"Silly Love Songs", 1976
Lyrics, Wings
Context: You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs
I look around me and I see it isn't so
Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs
And what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know
'Cause here I go again...
I love you.

“To lead a better life,
I need my love to be here.
Here, making each day of the year”

Paul McCartney

"Here, There and Everywhere" form Revolver (1966) - Full lyrics at Songfacts.com http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=105
Lyrics, The Beatles
Context: To lead a better life,
I need my love to be here.
Here, making each day of the year,
Changing my life with a wave of her hand.
Nobody can deny that there's something there.

“I want her everywhere
and if she's beside me I know I need never care.
But to love her is to need her Everywhere, knowing that love is to share
each one believing that love never dies
watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there.”

Paul McCartney

"Here, There and Everywhere" (1966)
Lyrics, The Beatles

“Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away.”

Paul McCartney

"Yesterday", from Help! (1965)
Lyrics, The Beatles
Context: Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Paul McCartney Quotes about people

“While the others had got married and moved out to suburbia, I had stayed in London and got into the arts scene through friends like Robert Fraser and Barry Miles and papers like The International Times. We opened the Indica gallery with John Dunbar, Peter Asher and people like that. I heard about people like John Cage, and that he’d just performed a piece of music called 4’33” (which is completely silent) during which if someone in the audience coughed he would say, ‘See?’ Or someone would boo and he’d say, ‘See? It’s not silence—it’s music.’ I was intrigued by all of that. So these things started to be part of my life. I was listening to Stockhausen; one piece was all little plink-plonks and interesting ideas. Perhaps our audience wouldn’t mind a bit of change, we thought, and anyway, tough if they do! We only ever followed our own noses—most of the time, anyway. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was one example of developing an idea.”

Paul McCartney

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 212

“I really wish the people that look sort of in anger at the 'weirdos,' at the happenings, at the psychedelic freak-out, would instead of just looking with anger, just look with nothing; with no feeling; be unbiased about it. They really don't realize that what these people are talking about is something that they really want themselves. It's something that everyone wants. You know, it's personal freedom to be able to talk and be able to say things And it's dead straight! It's a real sort of basic pleasure for everyone. But it looks weird from the outside.”

Paul McCartney

From the TV show "It's So Far Out It's Straight Down", 18.1.1967

“We're constantly being asked all sorts of very profound questions. But we're not very profound people. People say, 'What do you think of the H-bomb, of religion, of fan worship?' But we didn't really start thinking about these things until people asked us. And even then we didn't get much time to consider them. What do I think of the H-bomb? Well, here's an answer with the full weight of five O levels and one A level behind it: I don't agree with it.”

Paul McCartney

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 109

“Criticism didn't really stop us and it shouldn't ever stop anyone, because critics are only the people who can't get a record deal themselves.”

Paul McCartney

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 96

“With life and all I've been through, I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit. I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good's become God with 'o' out, and evil's become Devil with a 'd' added. That's my theory of religion.”

Paul McCartney

The Beatles Anthology (2000)

Paul McCartney: Trending quotes

“I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.”

Paul McCartney

Death , Dead

“What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.”

Paul McCartney

Music

“Paul's last words to Linda: "You're up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It's a fine spring day. We're riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear-blue".”

Paul McCartney

I had barely got to the end of the sentence when she closed her eyes and gently slipped away. She was unique, and the world is a better place for having known her. I love you, Linda. note: Last words to his wife, Linda, as recounted by McCartney in a statement released to the press three days after her death
Source: as quoted in "Linda's Death 'Heartbreak' for McCartney" https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=99480655 by Emma Ross, Tucson Citizen (April 21, 1998), p. B1

Beauty , Spring

Paul McCartney Quotes

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarian.”

Paul McCartney

Variant: If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

“We thought we'd be really big in Liverpool.”

Paul McCartney

On the Beatles' early expectations of their success (2007 interview with Larry King)

“Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”

Paul McCartney

Source: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999

Learning , Flying

“the beatles were always a great band. nothing more nothing less”

Paul McCartney

“Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better.”

Paul McCartney

"Hey Jude" (1968)
Lyrics, The Beatles
Context: Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better.
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better.

Sadness

“When you were young, and your heart, was an open book. You used to say, live and let live.”

Paul McCartney

Books , Heart

“I don't work at being ordinary.”

Paul McCartney

“When we were kids we always used to say, ‘Okay, whoever dies first, get a message through.’
When John died, I thought, ‘Well, maybe we’ll get a message,’ because I know he knew the deal. I haven’t had a message from John.”

Paul McCartney

“Lady Madonna lying on the bed
Listen to the music playing in your head.”

Paul McCartney

Music , Lying

“It's like if you're an astronaut and you've been to the moon, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?”

Paul McCartney

Life

“Animation is not just for children - it's also for adults who take drugs.”

Paul McCartney

Children , Animals

“Obladi oblada life goes on bra
Lala how the life goes on”

Paul McCartney

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (1968)
Lyrics, The Beatles

Life

“For cruelty to animals, vegetarianism is the great thing to get rid of that. For the planet, to prevent depleting the water and the land and everything, it’s a great idea. And I think it’s a great thing for your health, and doctors nowadays agree with that. There are plenty of great books and organizations, so no matter where you are, there is someone to help you. That’s your first step, and I think your second step is just look in the supermarket for good vegetarian food, and I think it’s so much more readily available now.”

Paul McCartney

Sir Paul McCartney and PETA VP Dan Mathews Reflect on Two Decades of Activism http://www.peta.org/features/paul-mccartney-interview/ (April 2005)

Health , Books , Food , Idea

“I wasn't really dead.”

Paul McCartney

"The Chris Farley Show" sketch on Saturday Night Live, regarding the Paul is Dead hoax.

Dead

“Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.”

Paul McCartney

“For you know that it's a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.”

Paul McCartney

Source: Paul McCartney, Composer/Artist

World , Fools

“I tend not to say much on the phone now. If I leave a message, it's benign. You edit yourself according to the new circumstances of the new world. I think it would be quite good to get some sort of laws.”

Paul McCartney

Discussing phone hacking http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/8932864/Sir-Paul-McCartney-had-phone-hacked.html

World , Law , Thinking

“I thought the only lonely place was on the moon.”

Paul McCartney

"Jet" from Band on the Run (1974)
Lyrics, Wings

“Will you still need me,
will you still feed me,
when I'm sixty-four?”

Paul McCartney

"When I'm Sixty-Four" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Lyrics, The Beatles

“I don't have any desire to learn. I feel it's like a voodoo, that it would spoil things if I actually learnt how things are done.”

Paul McCartney

Of arranging, The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 175

Feeling , Learning

“I'd like to be able to go on holiday and not to have to hold my belly in for two whole weeks.”

Paul McCartney

Of his fear that paparazzi would take unflattering photos http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/8932864/Sir-Paul-McCartney-had-phone-hacked.html

Holiday

“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.”

Paul McCartney

"Yesterday", from Help! (1965)
Lyrics, The Beatles

“Some fella said to me, "Have you had LSD, Paul?" And I said "Yes." And it was only 'cuz I was going to just be honest with him. There's no other reason. I didn't want to spread it or anything, you know. I'm not trying to do anything except answer his question. But he happened to be a reporter, and I happened to be a Beatle.”

Paul McCartney

Pop Chronicles: Show 39 - The Rubberization of Soul: The great pop music renaissance. Part 5 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19798/m1/, interview recorded 5.14.1968 http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1968.0514.beatles.html

Question

“Personally, I think you can put any interpretation you want on anything, but when someone suggests that Can't Buy Me Love is about a prostitute, I draw the line. That's going too far.”

Paul McCartney

The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics (1969), p 107 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DKG-FXj_HNYC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=%22I+think+you+can+put+any+interpretation+you+want+on+anything,+but+when+someone+suggests+that+Can%E2%80%99t+Buy+Me+Love+is+about+a+prostitute,+I+draw+the+line.+That%E2%80%99s+going+too+far.%22&source=bl&ots=dZZ8CWP3RD&sig=72RA2gERz8OtnW7coK4F0ND9sXc&hl=en#v=onepage&q=%22I%20think%20you%20can%20put%20any%20interpretation%20you%20want%20on%20anything%2C%20but%20when%20someone%20suggests%20that%20Can%E2%80%99t%20Buy%20Me%20Love%20is%20about%20a%20prostitute%2C%20I%20draw%20the%20line.%20That%E2%80%99s%20going%20too%20far.%22&f=false

Love , Thinking , Drawing , Personality

“Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, nothing could come between us.
When it gets dark I'll tow your heart away”

Paul McCartney

"Lovely Rita" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Lyrics, The Beatles

Love , Heart

“She's lovely, great. She was very friendly. She was just like a mum to us.”

Paul McCartney

About Queen Elizabeth II, in an interview after the Beatles received their MBEs from her (26 October 1965)

Love

“We probably seem to be anti-religious…none of us believes in God.”

Paul McCartney

Hit Parader (January 1970)

God

“Why she had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.”

Paul McCartney

"Yesterday", from Help! (1965)
Lyrics, The Beatles

“The long and winding road that leads to your door
Will never disappear,
I've seen that road before it always leads me here,
Leads me to your door.”

Paul McCartney

"The Long and Winding Road" from Let It Be (1970)
Lyrics, The Beatles

Paul McCartney

We opened the Indica gallery with John Dunbar, Peter Asher and people like that. I heard about people like John Cage, and that he’d just performed a piece of music called 4’33” (which is completely silent) during which if someone in the audience coughed he would say, ‘See?’ Or someone would boo and he’d say, ‘See? It’s not silence—it’s music.’ I was intrigued by all of that. So these things started to be part of my life. I was listening to Stockhausen; one piece was all little plink-plonks and interesting ideas. Perhaps our audience wouldn’t mind a bit of change, we thought, and anyway, tough if they do! We only ever followed our own noses—most of the time, anyway. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was one example of developing an idea.
The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 212

Time , Art