John Lennon Quotes & Sayings

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

I'm not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine - and potentially evil. We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you'll see it. — John Lennon

I was stuck in the feeling that one did not
was not justified in being alive unless one was fulfilling other people's dreams, whether they were contractual dreams or the public's dreams, or fulfilling my own dreams and illusions about what I thought I was supposed to be, which, in retrospect, turned out to not be what I am. — John Lennon

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction. — John Lennon

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

If you're an unknown artist you're lucky to get an hour in a studio - it's a hierarchy and if you don't have hits, you don't get recorded again. — 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

Strawberry fields forever — John Lennon

A Conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words. — John Lennon

Free as a bird
It's the next best thing to be
Free as a bird.
Home, home and dry
Like a homing bird I'll fly
As a bird on wings.
Whatever happened to
The life that we once knew?
Can we really live without each other?
Where did we lose the touch
That seemed to mean so much?
It always made me feel so free. — 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'm not really a career person; I'm a gardener, basically. — John Lennon

One day at a time is all we do. One day at a time is good for you — John Lennon

Everything I've ever done is out. I don't have boxes of unreleased stuff. There's nothing in the files. I can never keep anything unless I don't like the sound of it or it didn't work. If I can sing it to an engineer, I can sing it to anyone ... — 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

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

Once the new power has taken over they have to establish a new status quo just to keep the factories and trains running. — John Lennon

Life is what happens when you make other plans. — John Lennon

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. — John Lennon

People think the Beatles know what's going on. We don't. We're just doing it. — John Lennon

If we took over Britain, then we'd have the job of cleaning up the bourgeoisie and keeping people in a revolutionary state of mind. — John Lennon

I feel now at 53 I have grown into a deeper understanding of what a human life is. — John Lennon

Ringo isn't the best drummer in the world. He isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles — John Lennon

Songwriting 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 to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them ... — 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

I am not the Beatles. I'm me. Paul isn't the Beatles ... The Beatles are the Beatles. Separately, they are separate. — John Lennon

When we came along there was only Decca, Philips and EMI who could really produce a record for you. You had to go through the whole bureaucracy to get into the recording studio. You were in such a humble position, you didn't have more than 12 hours to make a whole album, which is what we did in the early days. — 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

Peace and love are eternal — John Lennon

I believe that God is like a powerhouse, like where you keep electricity, like a power station. And that he's a supreme power, and that he's neither good not bad, left, right, black or white. He just is. And we tap that source of power and make of it what we will. Just as electricity can kill people in a chair, or you can light a room with it. I think God is. — John Lennon

When we got married, we knew our honeymoon was going to be public, anyway, so we decided to use it to make a statement. We sat in bed and talked to reporters for seven days. It was hilarious. In effect, we were doing a commercial for peace on the front page of the papers instead of a commercial for war. — John Lennon

Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip. — John Lennon

Life is what's going on while your making other plans. — John Lennon

Life is what is happening today while you were planning tomorrow — John Lennon

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

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. — John Lennon

I don't believe in Elvis. — John Lennon

I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me. — 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

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

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

Paul (McCartney) and I made a deal when we were 15. There was never a legal deal between us, just a deal we made when we decided to write together that we put both our names on it, no matter what. — John Lennon

Yoko [Ono] was well into liberation before I met her. She'd had to fight her way through a man's world - the art world is completely dominated by men - so she was full of revolutionary zeal when we met. — John Lennon

I was asked in an interview which was more important: money or love?
I told the interviewer that if he had to ask the question, he wouldn't understand the answer. — John Lennon

There's high, and then there's high, and to get really high
I mean so high that you can walk on the water, that high
that's where I'm goin' — John Lennon

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

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. — John Lennon

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. — John Lennon

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

There is no problem only solutions — John Lennon

Tame birds sing of freedom. Wild birds fly. — John Lennon

I don't believe in Beatles ... — John Lennon

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. — John Lennon

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

He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride. — 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

It came in a vision - a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, 'From this day forward you are Beatles with an A.' Thank you Mister Man, they said, thanking him. — John Lennon

Somehow the revolutionaries must approach the workers because the workers won't approach them. But it's difficult to know where to start; we've all got a finger in the dam. The problem for me is that as I have become more real, I've grown away from most working-class people. — John Lennon

You can't cheat kids. If you cheat them when they're children they'll make you pay when they're sixteen or seventeen by revolting against you or hating you or all those so-called teenage problems. I think that's finally when they're old enough to stand up to you and say, 'What a hypocrite you've been all this time. You've never given me what I really wanted, which is you. — John Lennon

I always like the studio best, once I got the hang of it and the control. I like it because it's complete control — John Lennon

I really thought that love would save us all. — John Lennon

We put a President up there, and then we set fire to him because he's not solving all our problems. — John Lennon

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

The more I see, the less I know for sure. — John Lennon

I was different, I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? — 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

Pools of sorrow. Waves of joy. — John Lennon

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. — 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

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

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. — John Lennon

I keep on reading the Morning Star newspaper to see if there's any hope, but it seems to be in the 19th century; it seems to be written for dropped-out, middle-aged liberals. — John Lennon

Turn left at Greenland.... — John Lennon

You won't get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it. — John Lennon

At the (record company) meeting Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do, so in the end I just said, 'I think you're daft. I want a divorce.' — John Lennon

It's weird not to be weird. — John Lennon

Don't hate what you don't understand! — John Lennon

She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on the window-pane. — 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

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

Life happens whilst you're planning other things. — 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

imagine a world without people — John Lennon

I realized that kids everywhere go for the same stuff; and seeing as we'd done it in England, there's no reason why we couldn't do it in America too. — John Lennon

I thought of nothing else but rock 'n' roll; apart from sex and food and money
but that's all the same thing, really. — John Lennon

Happiness is just how you feel when you don't feel miserable. — John Lennon

How can I give love when I don't know what it is I'm giving? — John Lennon

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die. — John Lennon

Please don't spoil my day; I'm miles away and, after all, I'm only sleeping. — 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

I've had the boyhood thing of being Elvis. Now I want to be with my best friend and my best friend is my wife. Who could ask for anything more? — 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

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted. — John Lennon

My life has been guided by an unseen piano player, who is actually typing this now. — John Lennon

If you want to be like the folks up on the hill, you have to learn to smile while you kill — 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

Why don't people believe us when we say we're simply in love? — John Lennon