“These critics with the illusions they've created about artists — it's like idol worship.”

— John Lennon

Associated Press via The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/lost-john-lennon-interview-30-years-after-death_n_793700.html <br class="br">Rolling Stone interview (1980) <br class="br">Context: These critics with the illusions they've created about artists — it's like idol worship. They only like people when they're on their way up … I cannot be on the way up again. … What they want is dead heroes, like Sid Vicious and James Dean. I'm not interesting in being a dead (expletive) hero. … So forget 'em, forget 'em.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "These critics with the illusions they've created about artists — it's like idol worship." by John Lennon?

John Lennon photo

John Lennon228

English singer and songwriter 1940–1980

Related quotes

“(About Pop Idols) Obviously, it's designed by record company executives who want a cheap success, and they don't want to give money to anybody and they don't want to give contracts, so they've created this world of very bubbly teenagers who want to be "idols" and they think all they have to do is mime quite well and they've made it. … But it's not the problem of the kids, it's the problem of the record companies, because it's just an inexpensive way for them to have so-called, I won't say "artists", but erm…You're nodding, you know what I mean.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From a radio interview with Janice Long (2002)
In interviews etc., About pop culture

“Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it”

D.H. Lawrence book Studies in Classic American Literature

Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)

“An artist who theorizes about his work is no longer artist but critic.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Temptaion of Harringay (1929)

“Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

“The very heart and root of sin is in an independent spirit. We erect the idol self; and not only wish others to worship, but worship ourselves.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 537.

“Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”

Brendan Behan (1923–1964) Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright

“When a man makes a reverent face before a face that is no face — that is idol worship!”

Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787–1859) Polish rabbi

As quoted in Tales of the Hasidim : The Later Masters (1948) by Martin Buber as translated by Olga Marx

“Without devotion, knowledge is tasteless. Without knowledge, devotion is mere empty idol worship.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

“I don't like film. Film is too clankingly real, too permanent, too industrial for me. … The worst thing about film, from my point of view, is that it cripples illusions which I have encouraged people to create in their heads. Film doesn't create illusions. It makes them impossible. It's a bullying form of reality, like the model rooms in the furniture department of Bloomingdale's.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

"Preface"
Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)

“If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Related topics