Top 628 Quotes & Sayings by John Lennon - Page 3

Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not if you put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don’t expect Carter or Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go

Life is what happens to you while you're planning on doing something else.

I never went to high school reunions. My thing is, out of sight, out of mind. That's my attitude toward life. So I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past.

Love, Love, Love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.

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

I wouldn't say I was a born writer; I'm a born thinker.

If the masses started to accept UFOs, it would profoundly affect their attitude towards life, politics, everything. It would threaten the status quo. Whenever people come to realize that there are larger considerations than their own petty lives, they are ripe to make radical changes on a personal level, which would eventually lead to a political revolution in society as a whole

I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus.

I really thought that love would save us all.

Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis there would be no Beatles.

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.

Get back to where you once belonged.

paranoia is just a heightened sense of awareness

When I was about twelve I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn't I don't care.

I felt that film (Let It Be) was set up by Paul for Paul. That is one of the main reasons the Beatles ended. I can't speak for George, but I pretty damn well know we got fed up of being sidemen for Paul. After Brian died, that's what happened, that's what began to happen to us. The camera work was set up to show Paul and not anybody else. And that's how I felt about it.

The reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up.

I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically - any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.

Love means having to say you're sorry every fifteen minutes.

It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.

It's amazing how low you go to get high.

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.

If you want peace, you won't get it with violence.

Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you've got to let it grow.

Meanings of all songs come after they are recorded. Someone else has to interpret them

Art is only a way of expressing pain.

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

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

It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that-it's all illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is unknown-then you're ahead of the game. That's what it is. Right?

I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

You can go to church and sing a hymn, Judge me by the colour of my skin, You can live a lie until you die, One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside.

Tell the truth and make it rhyme

When his rolls royce was mobbed by fans the chauffeur said: ''do you want me to get? them off the car?'' and Lennon replied: ''No - they paid for it, they can wreck it

What I'd have liked would have been the money and the hit records without the fame.

I can't remember anything without a sadness so deep that it hardly becomes known to me, so deep that its tears leave me a spectator of my own stupidity.

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

I'm not going to sacrifice love, real love, for any *%@$n' war or any friend, or any business, because in the end you're alone at night.

Violence begets violence, you know. And you can't kill off all the violent people or all the murderers. We'd have to kill off the government.

What I'm trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All those who are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in their mind. The acid dream is over, that is what I'm trying to tell them.

How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

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 remember a time when everybody I loved hated me because I hated them.

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.

Love is real, real is love, Love is feeling, feeling love, Love is wanting to be loved. Love is touch, touch is love, Love is reaching, reaching love, Love is asking to be loved. Love is you, You and me, Love is knowing, We can be. Love is free, free is love, Love is living, living love, Love is needing to be loved.

When real music comes to me - the music of the spheres, the music that surpasses understanding - that has nothing to do with me, cause I'm just the channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium... those moments are what I live for.

All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme. Try to tell the kids in the Seventies who were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was just The Beatles redone. There is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees.

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...

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

If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.

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.

Before Cliff (Richard) and The Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.

There is a time to let things happen, and a time to make things happen." "Life is what happens when you are making other plans.

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

I believe in everything until it's disproved.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.

I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it's fantastic. Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind you're left with great precision.

At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion is legalised madness.

The main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity. If people can't face up to the fact of other people being naked or smoking pot, or whatever they want to do, then we're never going to get anywhere. People have got to become aware that it's none of their business and that being nude is not obscene. Being ourselves is what's important. If everyone practiced being themselves instead of pretending to be what they aren't, there would be peace.