John Lennon
Strawberry fields foreverCollection: Famous Love
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.Collection: Drug
I don't mind looking to the camera - it's people that throw me.Collection: People
Love is like a flower - you have to let it grow.Collection: Flower
Barney Kessel is incredible. He's just amazing . . . . Nobody can play guitar like thatCollection: Music
Don't you think that the Beatles gave every sodden thing they've got to be the Beatles? That took a whole section of our youth - that whole period - when everybody else was just goofin' off we were workin' 24 hours a day!Collection: Thinking
It just was a gradual development over the years. I mean last year was 'all you need is love.' This year, it's 'all you need is love and peace, baby.' Give peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull together. You're all geniuses, and you're all beautiful. You don't need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you'll get it as soon as you like.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Class
I'm an Elvis fan because it was Elvis who really got me out of Liverpool.Collection: Fans
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.Collection: Inspirational
I've got used to the fact - just about - that whatever I do is going to be compared to the other Beatles. If I took up ballet dancing, my ballet dancing would be compared with Paul (McCartney)'s bowling.Collection: Dancing
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.Collection: Change
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.Collection: Fun
We announce the birth of a conceptual country, NEWTOPIA. Citizenship of the country can be obtained by declaration of your awareness of NEWTOPIA. NEWTOPIA has no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people. NEWTOPIA has no laws other than cosmic. All people of NEWTOPIA are ambassadors of the country. As two ambassadors of NEWTOPIA, we ask for diplomatic immunity and recognition in the United Nations of our country and our people.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Jesus
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.Collection: Inspirational
It made me high. It really did.Collection: Hinduism
I've never met anybody who's had a flashback in my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties, and I've never met anybody who had any problem. I've had bad trips, but I've had bad trips in real life. I've had a bad trip on a joint. I can get paranoid just sitting in a restaurant; I don't have to take anything.Collection: Real
Well, I just want him to grow up happy. That's the main thing.Collection: Growing Up
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.Collection: People
I used to think it was mere homesickness, then I started getting it at home.Collection: Home
You see, we're influenced by whatever's going. Even if we're not influenced, we're all going that way at a certain time. If we played a Stones record now - and a Beatles record - and we've been way apart, you'd find a lot of similarities. We're all heavy. Just heavy.Collection: Records
I once was the walrus, now I'm John.Collection: Walrus
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.Collection: Evil
Life happens whilst you're planning other things.Collection: Planning
Father, you left me, but I never left you.Collection: Family
Music is everybody's possession.Collection: Music Is
There's no such thing as sculpture or art or anything, it's just a bit of - it's just words, you know, and actually saying everything is art. We're all art, art is just a tag, like a journalists' tag, but artists believe it.Collection: Art
We were really professional by the time we got to the States; we had learned the whole game. When we arrived here we knew how to handle the press; the British press were the toughest in the world and we could handle anything. We were all right.Collection: Games
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.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Music
People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine.Collection: Eight
I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after Highway 64 (sic) and Blonde on Blonde, and even then it was because George (Harrison) would sit me down and make me listen.Collection: Listening
Wouldn't it be interesting to take Elvis back to his Sun Records period? I don't know. But I'm content to listen to his Sun Records. I don't want to dig him up out of the grave.Collection: Interesting
I don't want to grow up but I'm sick of not growing up - that way. I'll find a different way of not growing up. There's a better way of doing it than torturing your body.Collection: Growing Up
You say you want a revolution? Well, you know. We all want to change the world.Collection: World
If you want to get peace, you can get it as soon as you like if we all pull together. ... Think peace, live peace, and breathe peace and you'll get it as soon as you like.Collection: Being Yourself
"All you need is love." I believe it. It's damn hard, but I absolutely believe it.Collection: Inspirational
They want to hold onto something they never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything. They're just jacking off to - it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, okay? I don't need it.Collection: Artist
I didn't come after Elvis and Dylan, I've been around always. But if I see or meet a great artist, I love 'em.Collection: Artist
We're mostly macrobiotic, but sometimes I take the family out for a pizza.Collection: Sometimes
Before many black singers were still labouring under that problem of God; it was often 'God will save us'. But right through the blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain and also about sex, which is why I like it.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Dream
I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable.Collection: Song
The idea of being a rock and roll musician sort of suited my talents and mentality. The freedom was great, but then I found out I wasn't free. I'd got boxed in...The whole Beatle thing is just beyond comprehension ... subconsciously I was crying for help.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Jesus
I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now.Collection: Believe