Top 628 Quotes & Sayings by John Lennon - Page 9

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

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

Don't let them fool you with dope and cocaine, can't do you know harm to feel your own pain.

The idea of beetles came into my head. I decided to spell it BEATles to make it look like beat music, just a joke.

The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you. When the spinning stops - that'll be the time to worry. Not before.

It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken onstage.

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.

We're more popular than Jesus Christ now.

We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget.... They invented LSD to control people and what they did was give us freedom.

Well, I just want him to grow up happy. That's the main thing.

I believe that time wounds all heals. (karma)

We were cowards when we sacked him.

I don't bother so much about the others' songs. For instance, I don't give a damn about how 'Something' is doing in the charts - I watch 'Come Together' (the flip side) because that's my song.

I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this.

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

People never grasp the fact that they're going to have to go through the same thing again. They get to the sort of five-year stretch or the seven-year itch or whatever these tension points are that seem to be organic, built in, like the tide coming in and going out. It's like every time the tide goes out you quit--you move your house or something.

My original idea for the cover was better - decapitate Paul - but he wouldn't go along with it.

Mother, you had me, but I never had you.

And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let's stop all the fight.

Life is what happens when you make other plans.

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.

How can you talk about power to the people unless you realise the people is both sexes.

Music's all right John, but you'll never make a living out of it.

Everybody's talking about ministers, sinisters, banisters, and canisters, bishops, fishops, rabbis, and popeyes, bye-bye, bye-byes.

We announce the birth of a conceptual country, NEWTOPIA. Citizenship of the country can be obtained by declaration of your awareness of NEWTOPIA. NEWTOPIA has no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people. NEWTOPIA has no laws other than cosmic. All people of NEWTOPIA are ambassadors of the country. As two ambassadors of NEWTOPIA, we ask for diplomatic immunity and recognition in the United Nations of our country and our people.

Yoko [Ono] was showing me some of these Haiku in the original. The difference between them and Long fellow is immense. Instead of a long flowery poem the Haiku would say 'Yellow flower in white bowl on wooden table' which gives you the whole picture.

Millions of mind guerrillas, raising the spirit of peace and love, not war.

I had a lot of it in my day, but I don't like it. It's a dumb drug. Your whole concentration goes on getting the next fix. I find caffeine easier to deal with.

We're playing those mind games together Pushing the barriers, planting seeds Playing the mind guerrilla.

I don't mind looking to the camera -? it's people that throw me.

I love commercial music! I can dissect it and criticize it with any critic in the business. But without any thought, I just enjoy it. It's folk music. That's what I'm doing, folk music. I'm not intellectualizing it . . . and making it into a phoney art form. I'm just doing the music I enjoy.

Don't believe that jazz about there's nothing you can do, "turn on and drop out, man" - because you've got to turn on and drop in, or they're going to drop all over you.

I've never met anybody who's had a flashback in my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties, and I've never met anybody who had any problem. I've had bad trips, but I've had bad trips in real life. I've had a bad trip on a joint. I can get paranoid just sitting in a restaurant; I don't have to take anything.

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

Slipping? We're bigger than Jesus.

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.

One thing I can tell you is you have to be free. Come together, right now, over me.

I started being me about the songs, not writing objectively, but subjectively. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.

If there's anything that you want, If there's anything I can do, Just call on me, And I'll send it along with love from me to you.

That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be.

Try to see it my way, only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong. While you see it your way, there's a chance that we might fall apart before too long. We can work it out. W e can work it out.

Either I'm a genius or I'm mad, which is it? "No," I said, "I can't be mad because nobody's put me away; therefore I'm a genius." Genius is a form of madness and we're all that way. But I used to be coy about it, like me guitar playing. But if there's such a thing as genius - I am one. And if there isn't, I don't care.

Nothing happened in the sixties except that we all dressed up.

I've never voted. I've never voted yet although I could have voted for the last ten years.

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

It depends who they are. If it's Mick (Jagger) or the Old Guard as I call them, yeah, they're the Old Guard. Elton (John), David (Bowie) are the newies. I don't feel like an old uncle, dear, 'cause I'm not that much older than half of 'em, hehe.

Nothing is real.

I learned lots of dirty jokes very young. There was this girl who told me them. The gang I led went in for shoplifting and pulling girls' knickers down. Other boys' parents hated me.

Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind possessing and caressing m

They'll never be able to forget us.

In my case I've never not been political, though religion tended to overshadow it in my acid days.

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.

Look, I wasn't saying the Beatles are better than God or Jesus. I said 'Beatles' because it's easy for me to talk about Beatles. I could have said TV or the cinema, motor cars or anything popular and I would have gotten away with it.

It made me high. It really did.

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.

I'm an Elvis fan because it was Elvis who really got me out of Liverpool.

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.

I don't believe in Beatles.

Barney Kessel is incredible. He's just amazing . . . . Nobody can play guitar like that

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