John Lennon Quotes

From this moment on I know exactly where my life will go: seems that all I really was doing was waiting for love.

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.

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

We gave up everything just to sit at your table.

It seems that all revolutions end up with a personality cult - even the Chinese seem to need a father-figure.

We should be trying to reach the young workers because that's when you're most idealistic and have least fear.

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

In Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul got the record (The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) from a French DJ. For three weeks in Paris we didn't stop playing it. We all went potty about Dylan.

Wouldn't it be interesting to take Elvis back to his Sun Records period? I don't know. But I'm content to listen to his Sun Records. I don't want to dig him up out of the grave.

My life with the Beatles had become a trap... I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days; if I hadn't said that the Beatles were 'bigger than Jesus' and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas! God bless America. Thank you, Jesus.

When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy.

There are places I'll remember All my life though some have changed Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain All these places have their moments With lovers and friends I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life I've loved them all

There's nothing you can do that can't be done Nothing you can sing that can't be sung. Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game. It's easy. Nothing you can make that can't be made. No one you can save that can't be saved. Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time. It's easy. Nothing you can know that isn't known. Nothing you can see that isn't shown. Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be. It's easy.

Now, in the sixties we were naive, like children. Everybody went back to their rooms and said 'We didn't get a wonderful world of just flowers and peace and happy chocolate, and it won't be just pretty and beautiful all the time,' and just like babies everyone went back to their rooms and sulked. 'We're going to stay in our rooms and play rock and roll and not do anything else, because the world's a nasty horrible place, because it didn't give us everything we cried for.' Right? Crying for it wasn't enough.

When you wake up and your heart is going like the clappers or your back feels strained, or you develop some other hang-up, you should let your mind go to the pain and the pain itself will regurgitate the memory which originally caused you to suppress it in your body. In this way the pain goes to the right channel instead of being repressed again, as it is if you take a pill or a bath, saying 'Well, I'll get over it'. Most people channel their pain into God or masturbation or some dream of making it.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

I felt an obligation even then to write a song that people would sing in the pub or on a demonstration. That is why I would like to compose songs for the revolution.

I was different, I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me?

I'm a freakin' artist, man, not a (expletive) race horse.

I've always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo.

It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love or how you love, it matters only that you love

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.

Strawberry fields forever

I like rock & roll, and I don't like much else.

As a kid I had a dream - I wanted to own my own bicycle. When I got the bike I must have been the happiest boy in Liverpool, maybe the world. I lived for that bike. Most kids left their bike in the backyard at night. Not me. I insisted on taking mine indoors and the first night I even kept it in my bed.

Imagine all of us living in peace, it's too beautiful to just be a dream.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years, then they expect you to pick a career.

When Yoko [Ono] and I got married, we got terrible racialist letters - you know, warning me that she would slit my throat. Those mainly came from Army people living in Aldershot. Officers.

I wanna hold your gland.

Nobody's ever tried the peace thing, ... We are selling it like soap.

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

I keep on reading the Morning Star newspaper to see if there's any hope, but it seems to be in the 19th century; it seems to be written for dropped-out, middle-aged liberals.

Songwriting is like ... being possessed. You try to go to sleep but the song won't let you.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed.

Like Paul Kraston said, all I ask in life is a water bed, a TV and a typewriter. Well, I'll just have an ordinary bed, a TV and a guitar.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

I always read the papers, the political bits.

Well, I don't want to be king, I want to be real.

A Conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words.

And, because my role in society - or any artist or poet's role - is to try to express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel, not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. And it's like that's the job of the artist in society, not to...they're not some alienated being living on the outskirts of town. It's fine to live on the outskirts of town, but artists must reflect what we all are. … If that's taken it too much on meself, I feel that artists are that - they're reflections of society... Mirrors.

As I play the game of life, I try to make it better each and every day. And when I struggle in the night, The magic of the music seems to light the way.

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.

Sometimes you wonder, I mean really wonder. I know we make our own reality, and we always have a choice, but how much is preordained? Is there always a fork in the road, and are there two preordained paths that are equally preordained? There could be hundreds of paths where one could go this way or that way -- there's a chance, and it's very strange sometimes.

I want it to sound like an orange.

Today's folk song is rock and roll. Although it happened to emanate from America, that's not really important in the end because we wrote our own music and that changed everything.

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 cannot be what I am not.