John Lennon Quotes

144 Sourced Quotes

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
What do you see when you turn out the light?
I can't tell you but I know it's mine.
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends.

John Lennon
Well, that's rubbish, you know. Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that's just barely possible.

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

John Lennon
I don't mind people putting us down, because if everybody really liked us, it would be a bore. You've got to have people putting you down. It doesn't give any edge to it if everybody just falls flat on their face saying, "You're great." We enjoy some of the criticisms as well, they're quite funny; some of the clever criticisms, not the ones that don't know anything, but some of the clever ones are quite fun.

John Lennon
For I don't care too much for money,
For money can't buy me love.

John Lennon
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?

John Lennon
As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it's happening

John Lennon
I always hated all the social things. All the horrible events and presentations we had to go to. All false. You could see right through them all, and all the people there. I despised them. Perhaps it was partly from class. No, it wasn't. It was because they really were all false.

John Lennon
I'm sure the Queen thinks she's different. Imagine being brought up like that for 2,000 years! It must be pretty freaky. They must have a hard time trying to be human beings. I don't know if any of them ever make it, because I don't know much about them, but you feel sorry for people like that, because it's like us — only worse. If they believe they're royal, that's the joke.

John Lennon
And that's how The Beatles ended. Not because Yoko split The Beatles, but because she showed me what it was to be Elvis Beatle and to be surrounded by sycophants and slaves who were only interested in keeping the situation as it was. She said to me, "You've got no clothes on." Nobody had dared tell me that before.

John Lennon
The king is always killed by his courtiers, not by his enemies. The king is over-fed, over-drugged, overindulged; anything to keep the king tied to his throne. Most people in that position never wake up. They either die mentally or physically, or both.

John Lennon
All art is pain expressing itself. I think all life is, everything we do, but particularly artists — that's why they're always vilified. They're always persecuted because they show pain; they can't help it. They express it in art and the way they live, and people don't like to see that reality that they're suffering.

John Lennon
I always was a rebel because of whatever sociological thing gave me a chip on the shoulder. But on the other hand, I want to be loved and accepted. That's why I'm on stage, like a performing flea. Because I would like to belong. Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society and not be this loudmouth, lunatic, poet/musician. But I cannot be what I'm not. What the hell do you do? You want to belong, but you don't because you cannot belong.

John Lennon
They only wanted scientists in the Fifties. Any artsy-fartsy people were spies. They still are, in society.

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

John Lennon
What we did purposely is not have a pretty photograph; not have it lighted so as we looked sexy or good. There were a couple of other takes from that session where we looked rather nice, hid the little bits that aren't that beautiful; we looked good. We used the straightest, most unflattering picture just to show that we were human.

John Lennon
I don't regret anything [about] meditation, I still believe in and occasionally use it. I don't regret any of that. I don't regret taking drugs, because they helped me. I don't advocate them for everybody because I don't think I should. But for me it was good, India was good for me, and I met Yoko just before I went to India and had a lot of time to think things out there. Three months just meditating and thinking, and I came home and fell in love with Yoko and that was the end of it. And it's beautiful.

John Lennon
Children, don't do what I have done · I couldn't walk and I tried to run.

John Lennon
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.

John Lennon
Everything they told me as a kid has already been disproved by the same type of experts who made them up in the first place.

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
I didn't really know that much about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed to be so few and yet they painted themselves green and stood in front of the police waiting to get picked off.

John Lennon
I was a great one as a kid for standing and just looking out a window for hours and hours and hours. Now the TV does that for me, except for the view changes immensely.

John Lennon
In the two books I wrote, even though they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's many knocks at religion and there is a play about a worker and a capitalist. I've been satirising the system since my childhood. I used to write magazines in school and hand them around.

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
I found I was having continually to please the sort of people I'd always hated when I was a child. This began to bring me back to reality.

John Lennon
It was very romantic. It's all in the song, The Ballad of John and Yoko. If you want to know how it happened, it's in there. Gibraltar was like a little sunny dream. I couldn't find a white suit -​ I had sort of off-white corduroy trousers and a white jacket. Yoko had all white on.

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
When I was singing about 'All You Need Is Love' I was talking about something I hadn't experienced.

John Lennon