John Lennon citations célèbres
I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have gotten away with it. I'm sorry I opened my mouth. I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I wasn't knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's true more for England than here. I'm not saying that 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.
en
Conférence de presse à Chicago, le 11 août 1966 en réponse et en excuses aux réactions outrées et violentes à travers les États-Unis suite à l’interview de l’Evening Standard.
“Dieu est un concept / Par lequel nous pouvons mesurer / Notre douleur”
God is a concept / By which we can measure / Our pain
en
John Lennon Citations
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy/I don't mind, I think they're crazy/Running everywhere at such a speed/Till they find there's no need (there's no need). Please, don't spoil my day, I'm miles away/And after all I'm only sleeping.
Imagine there's no heaven / It's easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us only sky / Imagine all the peopleLiving for today... Imagine there's no countries / It isn't hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too / Imagine all the people / Living life in peace... Imagine no possessions / I wonder if you can/No need for greed or hunger / In a brotherhood of man / Imagine all the people / Sharing all the world... You may say i'm a dreamer / But i'm not the only one / I hope some day you'll join us / And the world will be as one
en
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity.
en
Propos recueillis par la journaliste britannique Maureen Cleave pour le périodique Evening Standard dans son édition du 4 mars 1966
On the next number, would those in the cheaper seats clap your hands ? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry!
en
Déclaration faite en annonce du titre Twist and Shout lors de la prestation des Beatles au «Royal Variety Performance» le 4 novembre 1963 au théâtre «Prince of Wales» de Londres devant la Reine Elisabeth, la Reine Mère, et la Princesse Margaret.
John Lennon: Citations en anglais
Variante: 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’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
“Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”
Also found with the alternative spelling: Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end
Found anonymously on Usenet in 2000 https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.support.divorce/gKiyfcAYreo/jjuc6KTu_NAJ. First known attribution to Lennon is from 2011 https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=stow-ma-apple-barn/45MNk9KiGsY/vaq6pr8hgI0J.
Disputed
Variante: Everything is OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end.
“Living is Easy with Eyes Closed.”
"Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967)
Lyrics
Variante: Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
Contexte: Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me. Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
As quoted in Sunday Herald Sun [Melbourne, Australia] (13 January 2003)]
Variante: Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”
frequently attributed to Lennon, but entirely unsourced
Disputed
"Ballad of John and Yoko" (1969), referring to his "bed-in" honeymoon of March 1969.
Lyrics
“It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.”
Playboy interview (1980)
Contexte: It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison — it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.
Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 226
Contexte: I don't need to go to church. I respect churches because of the sacredness that's been put on them over the years by people who do believe. But I think a lot of bad things have happened in the name of the church and in the name of Christ. Therefore I shy away from church, and as Donovan once said, "I go to my own church in my own temple once a day." And I think people who need a church should go. And the others who know the church is in your own head should visit that temple because that's where the source is. We're all God. Christ said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." And the Indians say that and the Zen people say that. We're all God. I'm not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine — and potentially evil. We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you'll see it.
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”
"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)"; similar expressions were used by others prior to Lennon's use of this line, and have been attributed to Betty Talmadge, Thomas La Mance, Margaret Millar, William Gaddis, and Lily Tomlin, but the earliest known published occurrence was the 1957 attribution of "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." to Allen Saunders in Reader's Digest, according to The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes
Lyrics, Double Fantasy (1980)
Variante: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
Variante: Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
“I wouldn't say I was a born writer; I'm a born thinker.”
Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 9
“Love is the flower you've got to let grow.”
Source: Lyrics, Mind Games (1973)
Contexte: We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
Doing the mind guerrilla,
Some call it magic — the search for the grail.
Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow.
“We're more popular than Jesus now”
One of the most controversial statements Lennon ever made, this was published in England's Evening Standard newspaper (4 March 1966) as part of an interview with writer Maureen Cleave.
Contexte: Christianity will go.. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
