John Lennon Quotes

Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.

The Beatles were just a band that made it very, very big, that's all.

Only by trying on other people's clothes do we find what size we are.

And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, 'That's it! Do that again!' In those days we really used to absolutely write like that - both playing into each other's noses.

At Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain.

You feel alone if you're the only one thinking 'wouldn't it be nice if there was peace and nobody was getting killed.' So advertise yourself that you're for peace if you believe in it.

I'd always felt repressed. We were all so pressurised that there was hardly any chance of expressing ourselves, especially working at that rate, touring continually and always kept in a cocoon of myths and dreams.

What does it mean when a person is such a pacifist that they get shot? I can never understand that.

The artist's role isn't to tell people how to feel, but reflect.

If [Sean] doesn't see me a few days or if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of get a glimpse of him, or if I'm feeling depressed without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer afford to have artistic depressions. If I start wallowing in a depression, he'll start coming down with stuff, so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes I can't, because something will make me depressed and sure as hell he'll get a cold or trap his finger in a door or something, and so now I have sort of more reason to stay healthy or bright.

The more reality we face, the more we realise that unreality is the main programme of the day. The more real we become, the more abuse we take, so it does radicalise us in a way, like being put in a corner. But it would be better if there were more of us.

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me With just a pocketful of soap.

It made me high. It really did.

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.

When I hold you in my arms and I feel my finger on your trigger I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun.

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.

They want to hold onto something they never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything. They're just jacking off to - it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, okay? I don't need it.

I've been reading [Nikita] Khrushchev Remembers. I know he's a bit of a lad himself - but he seemed to think that making a religion out of an individual was bad; that doesn't seem to be part of the basic Communist idea. Still people are people, that's the difficulty.

We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or antireligion. I'm not. I'm a most religious fellow. I was brought up a Christian and I only now understand some of the things that Christ was saying in those parables. Because people got hooked on the teacher and missed the message. All this bit about electing a President. We pick our own daddy out of a dog pound of daddies.

Free all the prisoners everywhere, all they want is truth and justice, all they need is love and care.

I used to say to my auntie, 'You throw my fu*kin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous,' and she threw the bast*rd stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fu*kin' genius or whatever I was when I was a child.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

I was feeling insecure you might not love me anymore

Before many black singers were still labouring under that problem of God; it was often 'God will save us'. But right through the blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain and also about sex, which is why I like it.

Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the wayThat's another piece of garbage. What the hell's it based on? We couldn't've come from anything-fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don't believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren't monkeys changing into men now? It's absolute garbage. It's absolutely irrational garbage, as mad as the ones who believe the world was made only four thousand years ago, the fundamentalists.

Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me.

There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme.

I know I hurt you then But that was way back when.

I resent performing for frisking idiots who don't know anything.

'Revolution' . There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'.

Without Jimmy (James) Dean the Beatles would never have existed.

The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was 'normal'.

You may say i'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

In Hamburg the waiters always had Preludin - and various other pills, but I remember Preludin because it was such a big trip - and they were all taking these pills to keep themselves awake, to work these incredible hours in this all-night place. And so the waiters, when they'd see the musicians falling over with tiredness or with drink, they'd give you the pill. You'd take the pill, you'd be talking, you'd sober up, you could work almost endlessly - until the pill wore off, then you'd have to have another.

I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn't go around shouting about it.

We're more popular than Jesus Christ now.

If you want to get peace, you can get it as soon as you like if we all pull together. ... Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like.

I could still be forgotten when I'm dead. I don't really care what happens when I'm dead.

I wanted to give five solid years of being there all the time (with Sean). I hadn't seen my first son Julian grow up, and now there's a 17-year-old man on the phone talking about motorbikes. No matter what artistic gains I get, or gold records, if I can't make a success out of my relationship with the people I love, then everything else is bullsh*t.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

I was trying to say something about Christianity, the idea that you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I didn't believe that.

We're crazy about this city. Los Angeles? That's just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for the trip to San Francisco.

It's alright all of us all living saying 'oh well there's enough of us so we won't have anymore, don't let anybody else live.' I don't believe in that.

If The Beatles or the 60's had a message, it was 'Learn to swim. And once you've learned - swim!