Top 100 Lennon's Quotes
#1. I like the Beatles. They're at the core of my musicality. And John Lennon's my spiritual father.
Esai Morales
#2. The Beatles meant everything to me growing up, and John was part of that. I loved Lennon's persona. He knew who he was, and he knew what he represented to a worldwide public ... I think he incited and inspired a whole group of youth to speak out and say what they felt.
John Travolta
#4. You should've been my first and my only. Lennon's Rain
Chris Myers
#5. I was always nervous to play my father's [John Lennon's] songs.
Sean Lennon
#6. Empires, essentially, create order. In their absence, you don't end up with lots of happy, little nation-states full of people sitting around campfires singing John Lennon's "Imagine." What you end up with is civil war, anarchy.
Niall Ferguson
#7. I bought [John Lennon's] 'Plastic Ono Band,' and I listened to it over and over for months. It's a monumental work of genius ...
Lenny Kravitz
#8. I'll buy myself some plastic water, I should have married Lennon's daughter.
Ozzy Osbourne
#9. 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
#10. Reporter lady: What's that color? John: Hm. I'd call this a color!
John Lennon
#11. There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be ...
John Lennon
#12. Everything is true and not true about everything. That's one thing I've learned.
John Lennon
#13. And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let's stop all the fight.
John Lennon
#14. She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on the window-pane.
John Lennon
#15. I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus.
John Lennon
#16. Most of the songs came from Europe and Africa and now they were coming back to us. Many of [Bob] Dylan's best songs came from Scotland, Ireland or England. It was a sort of cultural exchange.
John Lennon
#17. We put a President up there, and then we set fire to him because he's not solving all our problems.
John Lennon
#18. Writing studio movies is the best job in the world ... it's awesome.
Thomas Lennon
#19. Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.
John Lennon
#20. I find it upsetting to see the erosion of manners. It's very scary. Where are the 'pleases' and 'thank yous?'
Julian Lennon
#21. There's no single movement out there. It's not like in the '60s, when Revolver came out and that's just it for the next year.
Sean Lennon
#22. Why should The Beatles give more? Didn't they give everything on God's earth for ten years? Didn't they give themselves?
John Lennon
#23. They say rock is dead. Andy [Warhol] said art is dead. God is dead according to Nietzsche. If everything's dead what's alive? Only technology. We're in the era of technology.
Sean Lennon
#24. I have a short temper - I think it's part of the Celtic background. I used to be a lot more angry, but I was quite discreet with it.
Julian Lennon
#25. Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.
John Lennon
#26. I look back and wonder why I wasted my time talking about fried potatoes with the great John Lennon. But that's what was so fabulous about him - he was very down to earth.
Kiki Dee
#27. I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever's going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.
John Lennon
#28. Imagine all of us living in peace, it's too beautiful to just be a dream.
John Lennon
#29. It's mostly just you have to convince yourself that there's nothing else in the room but John Lennon and suddenly things start John Lennon-ing!
Grant Morrison
#30. 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
#31. 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.
John Lennon
#32. There's room at the top, they are telling you still. But first you must learn how to smile as you kill!
John Lennon
#33. Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.
John Lennon
#34. We insult her everyday on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she's young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb
John Lennon
#35. People say the Beatles were John Lennon. What is Paul McCartney? Chopped liver? But everyone has their own favourite members whose creativity they gravitate to. That's normal.
Mike Love
#36. There is an alternative to war. It's staying in bed and growing your hair.
John Lennon
#37. I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.
John Lennon
#38. I have a specific set of, I have a specific sort of negative energies to deal with that might be specific to me, but it definitely something that all artists have to deal with at one point or another. But I think for me, it's just maybe more specific.
Sean Lennon
#39. When your hair is rising, that's when you know it's a good song - that's happened to me with some artists and some songs, John Lennon songs or when Nina Simone sings. It's great to make those moments yourself.
Jose Gonzalez
#40. All this bit about angels and all the different religions, it's based on something. I think anything's possible. I believe in everything until it's disproved.
John Lennon
#41. Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today ...
John Lennon
#42. Nobody in Hollywood ever sets out to make a bad movie ever but about 99% of the time, that's what happens.
Thomas Lennon
#43. When Johnny Cash died, ... I picked up my guitar and got the idea that Bob Dylan was the last man standing, the last of the real gods. It was for Dylan, Cash, Lennon, Elvis that's what I was thinking.
Jon Bon Jovi
#44. The worst drugs are as bad as anybody's told you. It's just a dumb trip, which I can't condemn people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one's own personal, social, emotional reasons. It's something to be avoided if one can help it.
John Lennon
#45. The good thing about being a writer is that you don't need anything except for a laptop. You can really do your own work and if you're not manically compelled to write all the time before you do it professionally, it's probably not a business for you anyway.
Thomas Lennon
#46. It's a bit like walking down a long, dark corridor never knowing when the light will go on.
Neil Lennon
#47. 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
#48. Going to America increased the build up on me, especially as the war was going on there. In a way we'd turned out to be a Trojan horse. The 'Fab Four' moved right to the top and then sang about drugs and sex and then I got into more and more heavy stuff and that's when they started dropping us.
John Lennon
#49. I'm cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I'm not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That's why I really don't want to be labeled a cynic.
John Lennon
#50. My mum is in a mental hospital. There's a fine line between genius and insanity. Winston Churchill, Mozart, John Lennon. These people all had a touch of crazy that fuelled their brilliance. They were not locked up for it like my mum. Pft. Then again, Winston Churchill never tried to kill my dad.
Christopher Titus
#51. That's the other thing about working on movies, the commitment is years. That's one thing that's so frustrating about the process is that it goes on and on and on for years.
Thomas Lennon
#52. If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture.
John Lennon
#53. My favourite men's clothes are like Victorian British clothing.
Sean Lennon
#54. Work is life, you know, and without it, there's nothing but fear and insecurity.
John Lennon
#55. 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
#56. We're not disinterested in politics. It's just that politicians are disinteresting.
John Lennon
#57. There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
John Lennon
#58. 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
#59. When you get into a fight with your partner or a friend, you usually have some weird, specific thing that you hold on to that you fight about that has nothing to do with what's going on.
Lennon Parham
#60. 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
#61. It's pretty simple to me: we come from a really grounded world where anything you say could be the thing that the scene becomes about. We're always treating it as if we would treat it in real life. It's all observation.
Lennon Parham
#62. Music's all right John, but you'll never make a living out of it.
John Lennon
#63. The artist's role isn't to tell people how to feel, but reflect.
John Lennon
#64. If you just want to be a writer, I don't care, for pitching, for writing dialogue, you should take an improvisation class. It's super important.
Thomas Lennon
#65. 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.
John Lennon
#66. 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
#67. It depends who they are. If it's Mick (Jagger) or the Old Guard as I call them, yeah, they're the Old Guard. Elton (John), David (Bowie) are the newies. I don't feel like an old uncle, dear, 'cause I'm not that much older than half of 'em, hehe.
John Lennon
#68. The pressures of being a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious parent, and really look to that little being's mental and physical health, is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid most of the time because it's too hard.
John Lennon
#69. If you bring a child into this world, whether it's planned or an accident, you'd better make sure you can care for it. You have to be around. You make time. It's as simple as that.
Julian Lennon
#70. I spend my time trying to figure art out. I was brought up to believe that the way one processes information is by making it into art. That's how I live my life.
Sean Lennon
#71. The Beatles were just a band that made it very, very big, that's all.
John Lennon
#72. Music is everybody's business. It's only the publishers who think people own it
John Lennon
#73. You'd have to give people free rein to attack the local councils or to destroy the school authorities, like the students who break up the repression in the universities. It's already happening, though people have got to get together more.
John Lennon
#74. I have such an admiration for John [Lennon], like most people.
But to be the guy who wrote with him, well that's enough. Right
there you could retire and go, 'Jesus I had a fantastic life. Take me, Lord.'
Paul McCartney
#75. Nobody's ever tried the peace thing, ... We are selling it like soap.
John Lennon
#76. It was my Fat Elvis period. I was eating and drinking like a pig. I was depressed and I was crying out for help. It's real. And I meant it.
John Lennon
#77. 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
#78. It's like John Lennon writing with ... Taylor Swift instead of Paul McCartney.
Rainbow Rowell
#79. 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.
John Lennon
#80. 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
#81. Only by trying on other people's clothes do we find what size we are.
John Lennon
#82. Today's folk song is rock and roll. Although it happened to emanate from America, that's not really important in the end because we wrote our own music and that changed everything.
John Lennon
#83. I don't like when people dress intentionally ugly. Personally that's not my thing.
Sean Lennon
#84. We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her, home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that she's too
unworldly to be our friend
John Lennon
#85. 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
#86. DAYS THAT I'LL REMEMBER is a lovingly assembled and beautifully written collection of conversations, observations, and memories of music, friendship, and days gone by. It's good to be back again with John Lennon, his beloved Yoko Ono, and his trusted chronicler and friend Jonathan Cott.
Martin Scorsese
#87. The most important thing in my father's life? World peace. Me and my brother. My mom.
Sean Lennon
#88. 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
#89. A more interesting question is not 'Why did they break up?' but 'Would they have gotten back together?' ... There's always a chance we'd work together again, but I can't see us touring. I just see us making records.
John Lennon
#90. And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he's no longer God ... They'll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.
John Lennon
#91. I live in a small apartment in London, not some big house with a lot of security. I don't like too much security. There's no freedom. I'm a person, not some precious diamond that needs guarding every second.
Julian Lennon
#92. I'm always surprised that people make such a fuss about Italian tailoring and French design houses. I think traditional British tailoring for men is so good. Everything's the right cut, the fabrics are good.
Sean Lennon
#93. People have made a living deconstructing Lennon and The Beatles songs because of their compositional sophistication. But what's so exciting about John is that he never had any of that training on musical theory; something just spoke to him, and he just knew what sounded right.
Randy Bachman
#94. 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
#95. "I've always thought there was this underlying thing in Paul's "Get Back." When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang the line "Get back to where you once belonged," he'd look at Yoko."
John Lennon
#96. I do think British tailoring is the best. French people hate me when I say that, but I do think it's true.
Sean Lennon
#97. 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.
John Lennon
#98. The level of acting that I bring to films in three dimensions. I hope they make people sign some kind of waiver because if their mind explodes from my acting in 3D, it's not my fault.
Thomas Lennon
#99. We're crazy about this city. Los Angeles? That's just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for the trip to San Francisco.
John Lennon
#100. I think it's the best thing I've ever done. I think it's realistic, and it's true to the me that has been developing over the years. I like first-person music.
John Lennon
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