Selected Quotes by John Lennon
John Lennon- John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician, and peace activist. He gained global fame as one of the founders, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His work included music, writings, drawings, and films. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains as one of the most successful in history.
He was born in Liverpool, England and became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed The Quarrymen which later evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Sometimes called "The Smart Beatle", He was initially the band's de facto leader, a role he gradually ceded to McCartney.
Initially just a musician, he soon expanded to other media like films, writings and drawings. His songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture of the 1960s. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, the multimedia artist Yoko Ono. The couple held the two-week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-ins for Peace, and left the Beatles to embark on a solo career.
Between 1968 and 1972, he and Ono collaborated on many works, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, several more films, his solo debut John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top-10 singles "Give Peace a Chance", "Instant Karma!", "Imagine", and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)".
Lennon and Ono separated from 1973 to 1975, during which time he produced Harry Nilsson's album Pussy Cats. He also had chart-topping collaborations with Elton John with "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" and David Bowie with "Fame". In 1980. after a five-year hiatus, Lennon returned to music collaborating with Ono on Double Fantasy. He was murdered by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album's release.
As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number-one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 1982, Lennon won the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC history poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and 38th greatest artist of all time. In 1997, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, first as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and second as a solo artist in 1994.
Selected Quotes by John Lennon:
“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that 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.”
John Lennon, Goals
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.”
John Lennon, Goals
“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, Goals
“Whatever gets you through the night.”
John Lennon, Goals
“Make your own dream.
That's the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko's story, that's what I'm saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald 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.
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.
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, Goals
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
John Lennon, Goals, Life
“War is over ... If you want it.”
John Lennon, Goals, Anger and Fighting
“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
John Lennon, Goals, Friendship, Happiness
“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.”
John Lennon, Goals, Love, Life
“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, Belief
“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, Belief
“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
John Lennon, Belief
“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, Life, Happiness
“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
They call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Sounds of laughter shades of love are
Ringing through my open ears inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a
Million suns, and calls me on and on
Across the universe.”
John Lennon, Life, Happiness, Love, Nature
“As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.”
John Lennon, Sex
“The more I see, the less I know for sure.”
John Lennon, Intelligence/Wisdom
“One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.”
John Lennon, Life
“There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...”
John Lennon, Life
“Living is easy with eyes closed.”
John Lennon, Life
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
John Lennon, Life
“When you're drowning you don't think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I'm drowning and come and rescue me. You just scream.”
John Lennon, Life
“It's weird not to be weird.”
John Lennon, Life
“Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”
John Lennon, Life
“Nothing is real.”
John Lennon, Life
“How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?”
John Lennon, Life
“The more real you get the more unreal the world gets.”
John Lennon, Life
“Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.”
John Lennon, Life
“You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!”
John Lennon, Life
“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, Life
“There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game.
It's easy.
Nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It's easy.
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, Life
“I was the walrus, but now I am John...and so my friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over.”
John Lennon, Life
“Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends.”
John Lennon, Life
“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, Life, Nature
“We all shine on...like the moon and the stars and the sun...we all shine on...come on and on and on...”
John Lennon, Life, Nature
“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, Life, Love
“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.”
John Lennon, Life, Love
“Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on across the universe.”
John Lennon, Love, Nature
“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”
John Lennon, Love
“Love is a flower you got to let it grow.”
John Lennon, Love
“Everything is clearer when you're in love.”
John Lennon, Love
“Remember to let her into your heart.”
John Lennon, Love
“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, Love
“I was feeling insecure you might not love me anymore.”
John Lennon, Love
“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.”
John Lennon, Art
“Music is everybody's business. It's only the publishers who think people own it.”
John Lennon, Art
“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, Art
“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, Art, Goals
“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, Wealth
“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, Death
“I get by with a little help from my friends.”
John Lennon, Friendship
“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.”
John Lennon, Friendship, Truth
“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, Society
“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”
John Lennon, Society
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.”
John Lennon, Society
“Time wounds all heels.”
John Lennon, Time
“People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?'' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie ``You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, '' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different.
I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher.”
John Lennon, Intelligence/Wisdom
“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, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Please don’t spoil my day; I’m miles away and, after all, I’m only sleeping.”
John Lennon, Happiness
“There are no problems, only solutions.”