John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.” ~ John Lennon

“It seems that all revolutions end up with a personality cult – even the Chinese seem to need a father-figure.” ~ John Lennon

“Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed.” ~ John Lennon

“I’ve always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo.” ~ John Lennon

“I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The trouble is they are not aware they can get it.” ~ John Lennon

“I would like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Mother, you had me, but I never had you.” ~ John Lennon

“Nothing happened in the sixties except that we all dressed up.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“I could still be forgotten when I’m dead. I don’t really care what happens when I’m dead.” ~ John Lennon

“When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.” ~ John Lennon

“I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car, and into another.” ~ John Lennon

“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” ~ John Lennon

“They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, I told them they didn’t understand life.” ~ John Lennon

“I want it to sound like an orange.” ~ John Lennon

“Happiness is inside you, not with another person.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.” ~ John Lennon

“They hit you at school, they hate you if your clever, and they despise a fool.” ~ John Lennon

“Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go.” ~ John Lennon

“No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go.” ~ John Lennon

“It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You’d wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?” ~ John Lennon

“I’ve never really been wanted.” ~ John Lennon

“Your inside is out and your outside is in.” ~ John Lennon

“You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!” ~ John Lennon

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

“Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you.” ~ John Lennon

“Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.” ~ John Lennon

“Art is only a way of expressing pain.” ~ John Lennon

“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?” ~ John Lennon

“I dream in colour, and its always very surreal. My dream world is complete Hieronymus Bosch and Dali. I love it, I look forward to it every night.” ~ John Lennon

“The artist’s role isn’t to tell people how to feel, but reflect.” ~ John Lennon

“Nobody loves you when you’re down and out.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“If you enjoyed the time you wasted, then it wasn’t wasted time.” ~ John Lennon

“Love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep on watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.” ~ John Lennon

“It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don’t appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It’s the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison – it’s garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.” ~ John Lennon

“As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.” ~ John Lennon

“We had one thing in common – we were in love. But love is just a gift, and it doesn’t answer everything and it’s like a precious plant that you have to nurture and look after and all that.” ~ John Lennon

“Sarcasim is the lowest form of humor.” ~ John Lennon

“Love is like a flower – you’ve got to let it grow.” ~ John Lennon

“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today…” ~ John Lennon

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” ~ John Lennon

“If I’d lived in Roman times, I’d have lived in Rome. Where else? Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“We are all Christ and Hitler. Yoko and I want Christ to win.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“If somebody gives me a joint, I might smoke it, but I don’t go after it.” ~ John Lennon

“I didn’t leave the Beatles. The Beatles have left the Beatles, but no one wants to be the one to say the party’s over.” ~ John Lennon

“Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Happiness Is A Warm Gun not about heroin. A gun magazine was sitting there with a smoking gun on the cover and an article that I never read inside called ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun.’ I took it right from there. I took it as the terrible idea of just having shot some animal.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“We’re playing those mind games together, pushing the barriers, planting seeds, playing the mind guerilla.” ~ John Lennon

“It’s amazing how low you go to get high.” ~ John Lennon

“Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We’re pacifists, but I’m not sure what it means when you’re such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that.” ~ John Lennon

“Always remember this: ‘A kiss will never miss, and after many kisses a miss becomes a misses.’” ~ John Lennon

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.” ~ John Lennon

“I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn’t go around shouting about it.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.” ~ John Lennon

“I’ve always been politically minded and against the status quo. It’s pretty basic when you’re brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out It doesn’t matter much to me.” ~ John Lennon

“When you cross the street, take my hand.” ~ John Lennon

“I am going into an unknown future, but I’m still all here, and still while there’s life, there’s hope.” ~ John Lennon

“Time wounds all heels.” ~ John Lennon

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

“All of us growing up have come to terms with too much pain. Although we repress it, it’s still there. The worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realising your parents do not need you in the way you need them.” ~ John Lennon

“The only reason I went for that goal is that I wanted to say: ‘Now, mummy-daddy, will you love me?’” ~ John Lennon

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” ~ John Lennon

“Strawberry fields forever.” ~ John Lennon

“I don’t expect you to understand after you’ve caused so much pain, but then again-you’re not to blame; you’re just human-a victim of the insane.” ~ John Lennon

“I get by with a little help from my friends.” ~ John Lennon

“The more I see, the less I know for sure.” ~ John Lennon

“There is an alternative to war. It’s staying in bed and growing your hair.” ~ John Lennon

“I’m really very embarrassed about my guitar playing, in one way, because it’s very poor. I can never move but I can make a guitar speak.” ~ John Lennon

“It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.” ~ John Lennon

“Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.” ~ John Lennon

“All I want is the truth, just give me some truth.” ~ John Lennon

“In ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ I was visualizing Alice in Wonderland, an image of this female who would come and save me – a girl with kaleidoscope eyes who would be the real love of my life. Lucy turned out to be Yoko.” ~ John Lennon

“You’re born in pain and pain is what we’re in most of the time. And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need.” ~ John Lennon

“Creativity is a gift. It doesn’t come through if the air is cluttered.” ~ John Lennon

“You can only breathe out if you breathe in.” ~ John Lennon

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” ~ John Lennon

“Don’t let them fool you with dope and cocaine, can’t do you know harm to feel your own pain.” ~ John Lennon

“Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun, and if the sun don’t come, we’ll be standing in the English rain.” ~ John Lennon

“You can manicure a cat but can you caticure a man?” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“You say you want a revolution? Well, you know. We all want to change the world.” ~ John Lennon

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” ~ John Lennon

“You won’t get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it.” ~ John Lennon

“Life happens while we are making other plans.” ~ John Lennon

“If people take any notice of what we say, we say we’ve been through the drug scene, man, and there’s nothing like being straight.” ~ John Lennon

“A working class hero is something to be.” ~ John Lennon

“I’m cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I’m not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That’s why I really don’t want to be labeled a cynic.” ~ John Lennon

“All the revolutions have happened when a Fidel or Marx or Lenin or whatever, who were intellectuals, were able to get through to the workers. They got a good pocket of people together and the workers seemed to understand that they were in a repressed state.” ~ John Lennon

“Imagine no possessions; I wonder if you can.” ~ John Lennon

“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Millions of mind guerrillas, raising the spirit of peace and love, not war.” ~ John Lennon

“I’ll probably be popped off by some loony.” ~ John Lennon

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” ~ John Lennon

“Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.” ~ John Lennon

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

“Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe.” ~ John Lennon

“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.” ~ John Lennon

“Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on across the universe.” ~ John Lennon

“A day spent wasting time, that you enjoyed, is not time wasted…” ~ John Lennon

“I am the eggman They are the eggmen! I am the walrus!” ~ John Lennon

“I can’t speak for George, but I pretty damn well know we got fed up of being sidemen for Paul.” ~ John Lennon

“When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy.” ~ John Lennon

“In one way, I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things people didn’t see. I always saw things in a hallucinatory way.” ~ John Lennon

“As someone from the working class I was always interested in Russia and China and everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist game.” ~ John Lennon

“Music touching my soul, the spirit dance was unfolding.” ~ John Lennon

“Love, Love, Love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.” ~ John Lennon

“How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?” ~ John Lennon

“There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.” ~ John Lennon

“Control yourself. You’ll spurt.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“I can’t play guitar, but I can sure make it howl.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“One day at a time is all we do. One day at a time is good for you.” ~ John Lennon

“You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Whatever gets you through the night.” ~ John Lennon

“The sun is up, the sky is blue It’s beautiful, and so are you.” ~ John Lennon

“Everybody’s talking about ministers, sinisters, banisters, and canisters, bishops, fishops, rabbis, and popeyes, bye-bye, bye-byes.” ~ John Lennon

“Am I crazy or am I a genius? I don’t think I’m either.” ~ John Lennon

“If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles.” ~ John Lennon

“Remember to let her into your heart.” ~ John Lennon

“And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let’s stop all the fight.” ~ John Lennon

“A Conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words.” ~ John Lennon

“Nothing is real.” ~ John Lennon

“If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal.” ~ John Lennon

“One thing I can tell you is you have to be free. Come together, right now, over me.” ~ John Lennon

“You better get yourself together, darling, and join the human race.” ~ John Lennon

“The establishment irritates you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight because once they’ve got you violent they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humour.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“You don’t have to be a star to get a cheese sandwich. You just have to be first.” ~ John Lennon

“We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?” ~ John Lennon

“Love is the greatest refreshment in life.” ~ John Lennon

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

“I’ve always considered my work one piece and I consider that my work won’t be finished until I am dead and buried and I hope that’s a long, long time.” ~ John Lennon

“If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.” ~ John Lennon

“Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.” ~ John Lennon

“I used to hide my real emotions in gobbledegook, like in In His Own Write. When I wrote teenage poems, I wrote in gobbledegook because I was always hiding my real emotions from Mimi.” ~ John Lennon

“It’s weird not to be weird.” ~ John Lennon

“What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we’ll sink.” ~ John Lennon

“Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind possessing and caressing m.” ~ John Lennon

“Tell the truth and make it rhyme.” ~ John Lennon

“Getting out of one car and getting into another.” ~ John Lennon

“Don’t underestimate the importance of happiness. As long as you’re happy, who cares what you do?” ~ John Lennon

“All you need is love.” ~ John Lennon

“Before Elvis there was nothing.” ~ John Lennon

“What Can I Tell You about Myself which You Have Not Already Found Out from Those Who Do Not Lie?” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“I enjoyed it when football crowds in the early days would sing ‘All together now’ – that was another one. I was also pleased when the movement in America took up ‘Give peace a chance’ because I had written it with that in mind really.” ~ John Lennon

“At Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain.” ~ John Lennon

“I cannot be what I am not.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friends.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“The Beatles had gone beyond comprehension. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast. We were well into marijuana and nobody could communicate with us, because we were just glazed eyes, giggling all the time.” ~ John Lennon

“The Beatles were just a band that made it very, very big, that’s all.” ~ John Lennon

“Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was.” ~ John Lennon

“I used to think it was mere homesickness, then I started getting it at home.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“The first drugs I ever took, I was still at art school, with the group – we all took it together – was Benzedrine from the inside of an inhaler.” ~ John Lennon

“I’m not really a career person; I’m a gardener, basically.” ~ John Lennon

“Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Music’s all right John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.” ~ John Lennon

“The second political thing I did was to say ‘The Beatles are bigger than Jesus.’ That really broke the scene, I nearly got shot in America for that. It was a big trauma for all the kids that were following us.” ~ John Lennon

“Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These.” ~ John Lennon

“There is nothing conceptually better than rock ‘n’ roll. No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on Whole Lot of Shaking for my money. Or maybe I’m like our parents: that’s my period and I dig it and I’ll never leave it.” ~ John Lennon

“I was feeling insecure you might not love me anymore.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“It looks like I’m going to be 40 and life begins at 40 -? so they promise. And I believe it, too.” ~ John Lennon

“Music is everybody’s business. It’s only the publishers who think people own it.” ~ John Lennon

“Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis there would be no Beatles.” ~ John Lennon

“I’ve never voted. I’ve never voted yet although I could have voted for the last ten years.” ~ John Lennon

“Come together, right now.” ~ John Lennon

“Everyone deserves to believe they are beautiful.” ~ John Lennon

“Love is the Answer. What was the Question?” ~ John Lennon

“Peace and love are eternal.” ~ John Lennon

“It’s just natural, it’s not a great disaster. People keep talking about it like it’s The End of The Earth. It’s only a rock group that split up, it’s nothing important. You know, you have all the old records there if you want to reminisce.” ~ John Lennon

“There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic.” ~ John Lennon

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.” ~ John Lennon

“You can’t give a child too much love and if you love somebody, you can’t be with them enough. There’s no such thing.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

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

“The world went mad and used us as an excuse.” ~ John Lennon

“We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now.” ~ John Lennon

“I mean People come up and ask for autographs or say hi but they wont bug you.” ~ John Lennon

“Ringo isn’t the best drummer in the world. He isn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles.” ~ John Lennon

“Paul and I know each other on a lot of different levels that very few people know about.” ~ John Lennon

“Elvis died the day he went into the army.” ~ John Lennon

“I only ever asked two people to work with me as a partner. One was Paul McCartney and the other Yoko Ono. Paul and me were the Beatles.” ~ John Lennon

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” ~ John Lennon

“I want you to make love, not war, I know you’ve heard it before.” ~ John Lennon

“I don’t stand back and judge – I do.” ~ John Lennon

“The dream is over. I gotta get down to reality. The good old days is garbage.” ~ John Lennon

“Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It’s all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group.” ~ John Lennon

“I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” ~ John Lennon

“Instant Karma is going to get you.” ~ John Lennon

“I still believe in peace, love, and understanding.” ~ John Lennon

“Please don’t spoil my day; I’m miles away and, after all, I’m only sleeping.” ~ John Lennon

“When they’ve tortured and scared you for 20 odd years, then they expect you to pick a career.” ~ John Lennon

“Pools of sorrow. Waves of joy.” ~ John Lennon

“There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme.” ~ John Lennon

“Happiness is a good vibe for peace.” ~ John Lennon

“Meanings of all songs come after they are recorded. Someone else has to interpret them.” ~ John Lennon

“Love is a promise; love is a souvenir…” ~ John Lennon

“The magic of the music seems to light the way.” ~ John Lennon

“And So This Is Christmas; And What Have We Done? Another Year Over; A New One Just Begun; And So Happy Christmas; I Hope You Have Fun; The Near And The Dear Ones; The Old And The Young.” ~ John Lennon

“It’s like being possessed: like a psychic or a medium. I felt like a hollow temple filled with many spirits, each one passing through me, each inhabiting me for a little time and then leaving to be replaced by another.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“A mistake is only an error. It becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.” ~ John Lennon

“Happiness is a warm gun.” ~ John Lennon

“Love is real, real is love.” ~ John Lennon

“I never listen to the radio. If it’s bad, I make fun of it, and if it’s good, I get jealous that I didn’t think of it.” ~ John Lennon

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.” ~ John Lennon

“Love means having to say you’re sorry every fifteen minutes.” ~ John Lennon

“There are no problems, only solutions.” ~ John Lennon

“I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.” ~ John Lennon

“We’re trying to sell peace, like a product, you know, and sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks. And it’s the only way to get people aware that peace is possible, and it isn’t just inevitable to have violence. Not just war – all forms of violence.” ~ John Lennon

“Instant Karma’s gonna get you, gonna knock you right on the head.” ~ John Lennon

“All we are saying is give peace a chance.” ~ John Lennon

“The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people. It controls them.” ~ John Lennon

“I once was the walrus, now I’m John.” ~ John Lennon

“You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.” ~ John Lennon

“Everything is clearer when you’re in love.” ~ John Lennon

“I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it’s all this.” ~ John Lennon

“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” ~ John Lennon

“Tame birds sing of freedom. Wild birds fly.” ~ John Lennon

“We’re all God. I’m not a god or the God, but we’re all God and we’re all potentially divine-and potentially evil.” ~ John Lennon

“The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.” ~ John Lennon

“Free all the prisoners everywhere, all they want is truth and justice, all they need is love and care.” ~ John Lennon

“Make love, not war.” ~ John Lennon

“Happiness is just how you feel when you don’t feel miserable.” ~ John Lennon

“There’s room at the top they are telling you still, but first you must learn how to smile as you kill.” ~ John Lennon

“The people have the power. All we have to do is awaken the power in the people.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it. If you were going to give Rock ‘n’ Roll another name you might as well call it Chuck Berry. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – Rock and Roll or Christianity.” ~ John Lennon

“It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.” ~ John Lennon

“It was my Fat Elvis period. I was eating and drinking like a pig. I was depressed and I was crying out for help. It’s real. And I meant it.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Women should be obscene and not heard.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Imagine.” ~ John Lennon

“Imagine all the people living life in peace…” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?” ~ John Lennon

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.” ~ John Lennon

“The more real you get the more unreal the world gets. ” ~ John Lennon

“One thing you can’t hide – is when you’re crippled inside.” ~ John Lennon

“I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.” ~ John Lennon

“People asking questions, lost in confusion, well I tell them there’s no problem, only solutions.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Don’t need a gun to blow your mind.” ~ John Lennon

“We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.” ~ John Lennon

“I’ll give you everything I’ve got for a little peace of mind.” ~ John Lennon

“You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.” ~ John Lennon

“Living is easy with eyes closed.” ~ John Lennon

“Imagine all of us living in peace, it’s too beautiful to just be a dream.” ~ John Lennon

“I wouldn’t say I was a born writer; I’m a born thinker.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“I don’t know how much money I’ve got. I did ask the accountant how much it came to. I wrote it down on a bit of paper. But I’ve lost the bit of paper.” ~ John Lennon

“My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and 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.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Lack of feeling in an emotional sense is responsible for the way some singers do our songs. They don’t understand and are too old to grasp the feeling. Beatles are really the only people who can play Beatle music.” ~ John Lennon

“Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on earth are you there, when you’re everywhere-come and get your share.” ~ John Lennon

“When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“We’re mostly macrobiotic, but sometimes I take the family out for a pizza.” ~ John Lennon

“Peace in your mind, peace on earth, peace at work, peace at home, peace in the world.” ~ John Lennon

“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.” ~ John Lennon

“Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.” ~ John Lennon

“When somebody is angry with us, we draw a halo around his or her head, in our minds. Does the person stop being angry then? Well, we don’t know! We know, though, that when we draw a halo around a person, suddenly the person starts to look like an angel to us.” ~ John Lennon

“Leave a space and something will fill it.” ~ John Lennon

“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…” ~ John Lennon

“In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was.” ~ John Lennon

“I’m not saying we’re better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person, or God as a thing, or whatever it is. I just said what I said, and it was wrong, or it was taken wrong. And now it’s all this.” ~ John Lennon

“Don’t hate what you don’t understand!” ~ John Lennon

“Life is what happens to you while you’re planning on doing something else.” ~ John Lennon

“I remember a time when everybody I loved hated me because I hated them.” ~ John Lennon

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.” ~ John Lennon

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.” ~ John Lennon

“I really thought that love would save us all.” ~ John Lennon

“For those of you in the cheap seats I’d like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry!” ~ John Lennon

“There is no denying that we are still living in the capitalist world. I think that in order to survive and to change the world, you have to take care of yourself first. You have to survive yourself.” ~ John Lennon

“I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever’s going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.” ~ John Lennon

“Trying to please everybody is impossible – if you did that, you’d end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You’ve just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it.” ~ John Lennon

“Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.” ~ John Lennon

“Imagine no possesions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people Sharing all the world.” ~ John Lennon

“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.” ~ John Lennon

“I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.” ~ John Lennon

“How can you talk about power to the people unless you realise the people is both sexes.” ~ John Lennon

“Without a job all there is to life is boredom and insecurity.” ~ John Lennon

“Money can’t buy me love.” ~ John Lennon

“When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream.” ~ John Lennon

“Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who can control me is me, and even that’s barely possible.” ~ John Lennon