John Lennon Quotes

I was trying to say something about Christianity, the idea that you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I didn't believe that.

John Lennon The Beatles

• Heaven
• Idea
• Christianity

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Quotes to Explore

• Happiness is just how you feel when you don't feel miserable.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles

• When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Game
  • Violence

• 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 The Beatles
  • Love
  • Fear
  • Motivating forces

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

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Friends
  • Right
  • Being Honest

• 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 The Beatles
  • Army
  • CIA
  • LSD

• My teacher asked me what I want to be when I grow up, I said happy. She told me I don't understand the assignment, I told her she doesn't understand life.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Life
  • Teacher
  • Grow Up

• No - we need money first.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Money

• There is nothing conceptually better than rock 'n' roll. No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones, have ever improved on Whole Lot of Shaking for my money. Or maybe I'm like our parents: that's my period and I dig it and I'll never leave it.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Rock N Roll
  • Stone
  • Beatles

• It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison - it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • People
  • Hero
  • Soldier

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

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • God

• I believe time wounds all heels.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Time
  • Believe
  • Wounds

• 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 The Beatles
  • Love
  • For Her
  • For Him

• Well, that's rubbish, you know. Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that's just barely possible.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles

• When you're in love, when somebody says something like, "How can you be with that woman?" you say, "What do you mean? I am with this goddess of love, the fulfillment of my whole life. Why are you saying this? Why do you want to throw a rock at her or punish me for being in love with her?

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Love
  • Rock
  • Punish

• One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were . . . . It happened bit by bit, until . . . you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand -- the people you hated when you were ten.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • The Beatles
  • Humiliate

• 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 The Beatles
  • World
  • Spinning
  • Time to worry

• 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 The Beatles
  • Women
  • Revolution
  • Liberate women

• I'm not claiming divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can … But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Life
  • Believe
  • Soul

• I'd like to say 'thank you' on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we passed the audition.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Hope

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

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Rock
  • Jesus
  • Popular

• Happiness is a good vibe for peace.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Peace
  • Happiness
  • Vibe

• All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme. Try to tell the kids in the Seventies who were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was just The Beatles redone. There is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Music
  • Theme
  • Variations

• When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes and into my mind.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Mind
  • Love
  • Child

• I think a label like 'avant-garde' defeats itself. You learn to have avant-garde exhibitions. The very fact that avant-garde can have an exhibition defeats the purpose of avant-garde, because it's already formalised and ritualised.

  

  John Lennon The Beatles
  • Purpose