John Lennon Quotes

Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go

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

News conference in Chicago, where he apologized for the above statement, which was accepted by the Vatican. (11 August 1966)

Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme.

Paul (McCartney) and I made a deal when we were 15. There was never a legal deal between us, just a deal we made when we decided to write together that we put both our names on it, no matter what.

Love is all, love is new, love is all, love is you.

Paul and I know each other on a lot of different levels that very few people know about.

If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture.

The first thing we did was to proclaim our Liverpoolness to the world, and say 'It's all right to come from Liverpool and talk like this'. Before, anybody from Liverpool who made it, like Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Arthur Askey, had to lose their accent to get on the BBC.

Getting out of one car and getting into another

The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees; I want money.

if everyone could just be happy with themselves and the choices people around them make, the world would instantly be a better place!

I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now.

When I started, rock and roll itself was the basic revolution to people of my age and situation. We needed something loud and clear to break through all the unfeeling and repression that had been coming down on us kids.

I don't know if I want to record together again. I go off and on it... In the old days, when we needed an album, Paul and I got together and produced enough songs for it. Nowadays, there's three of us writing prolifically and trying to fit it all into one album.

The Beatles is over, but John, Paul, George, and Ringo...God knows what relationship they'll have in the future. I don't know. I still love those guys! Because they'll always be those people who were that part of my life.

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

Sitting on a cornflake, Waiting for the van to come...

Work is life, you know, and without it, there's nothing but fear and insecurity.

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

I don't stand back and judge - I do.

Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

We want to go forward, but which way are we facing?

Why don't people believe us when we say we're simply in love?

As a child I did a lot of imaginary bits, you know. It depends on the individual, I enjoyed then knocking the nail in, I enjoy knocking nails in walls to hang pictures up, but I also enjoy thinking 'I'm gonna do that' but I actually won't do it, I enjoy imagining doing things just as much.

We need to love ourselves first in All our glory and imperfections

You can't cheat kids. If you cheat them when they're children they'll make you pay when they're sixteen or seventeen by revolting against you or hating you or all those so-called teenage problems. I think that's finally when they're old enough to stand up to you and say, 'What a hypocrite you've been all this time. You've never given me what I really wanted, which is you.

The women are very important too, we can't have a revolution that doesn't involve and liberate women. It's so subtle the way you're taught male superiority.

It's no good having, being with people you can dominate all the time. Or being with someone who can dominate you all the time. Because either one is boring.

I don't believe in yesterday, by the way.

If you're an unknown artist you're lucky to get an hour in a studio - it's a hierarchy and if you don't have hits, you don't get recorded again.

Once the new power has taken over they have to establish a new status quo just to keep the factories and trains running.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help.

He laid it on George, me and our wives without telling us at a dinner party at his house. He was a friend of George's, and our dentist at the time. He just put it in our coffee or something. He didn't know what it was, it was just, 'It's all the thing,' with the middle-class London swingers. They had all heard about it and didn't know it was different from pot or pills. And they gave it to us, and he was saying, 'I advise you not to leave,' and we thought he was trying to keep us for an orgy in his house and we didn't want to know.

You don't have to be a star to get a cheese sandwich. You just have to be first.

Life is what happens when we are busy doing other things. Peace is not something you wish for; it's something you make, something you do, something you are and something you give away.

I'll be a good boy, please make me well. I promise you anything, get me out of this hell. Cold turkey has got me on the run.

They hit you at school, they hate you if your clever, and they despise a fool.

We're mostly macrobiotic, but sometimes I take the family out for a pizza.

Elvis died the day he went into the army.

I believe Jesus was right, Buddha was right, and all of those people like that are right. They're all saying the same thing -​ and I believe it. I believe what Jesus actually said -​ the basic things he laid down about love and goodness -​ and not what people say he said.

Without Jimmy Dean, the Beatles never would have existed.

I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after Highway 64 (sic) and Blonde on Blonde, and even then it was because George (Harrison) would sit me down and make me listen.

Why should The Beatles give more? Didn't they give everything on God's earth for ten years? Didn't they give themselves?

I hope someday you will join us and the world will live as one.

I think it's the best thing I've ever done. I think it's realistic, and it's true to the me that has been developing over the years. I like first-person music.