John Lennon Quotations

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

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?

Love is the flower you've got to let grow.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

We've got this gift of love, but 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 watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.

Imagine all the people living life in peace. 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 be as one.

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.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he's no longer God... They'll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

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.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity.

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.

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.

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.

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.

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war -for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more.

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything.

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

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.

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

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

The more I see the less I know for sure.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

It doesn't matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I'm a woman or a man.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.

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.

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?

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

These critics with the illusions they've created about artists - it's like idol worship. They only like people when they're on their way up... I cannot be on the way up again.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

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.

Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.

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.

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

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

We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.

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?

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.

I don't believe in killing whatever the reason!

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

I think that through that kind of incredible, strange confrontation, people started to understand me,

Those in the cheaper seats clap. The rest of you rattle your jewelry.

I would have turned round right then and walked away.

We were a band who made it very, very big. That's all.

Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends

Tame birds sing of freedom. Wild birds fly.

What can I tell you about myself that you have not already found out from those who do not lie?

Now in the sixties we were naive, like children. Everybody went back to their rooms and said, 'We didn't get a wonderful world of just flowers and peace and happy chocolate, and it won't be just pretty and beautiful all the time,' and just like babies everyone went back to their rooms and sulked. 'We're going to stay in our rooms and play rock and roll and not do anything else, because the world's a horrible place, because it didn't give us everything we cried for.' Right?

They torture and scare you for twenty odd years... then they expect you to pick a career.

You may say I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one.I hope some day you'll join usand the world will be as one.

Nothing's gonna change my world, Nothing's gonna change my world.

Because you know you're never going to get in Billboard.

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.

It's always in the middle of the bloody night, or when you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them.

If I ate it would go right to my knee.

The Legendary Life of a Rock Star Drummer

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.

Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones

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.

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.

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.

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

Happiness is inside you, not with another person

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

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.

A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it

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

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

Don't hate what you don't understand!

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

Before Elvis there was nothing.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives

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.

We've learned over the years that if we wanted we could write anything that just felt good or sounded good and it didn't necessarily have to have any particular meaning to us. As odd as it seemed to us, reviewers would take it upon themselves to interject their own meanings on our lyrics. Sometimes we sit and read other people's interpretations of our lyrics and think, 'Hey, that's pretty good.' If we liked it, we would keep our mouths shut and just accept the credit as if it was what we meant all along.

Imagine there's no varmints. It isn't hard to do.

You are not your emotions,you have emotions,and you can master them.

People asking questions, lost in confusion, well I tell them there's no problem, only solutions.

Peace in your mind, peace on earth, peace at work, peace at home, peace in the world.

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.

A day spent wasting time, that you enjoyed, is not time wasted...

Everyone deserves to believe they are beautiful.

I cannot be what I am not.

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.

Creativity is a gift. It doesn't come through if the air is cluttered.

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

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.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream.

At Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain.

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.