John Lennon Quotes
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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.
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He laid it on George, me and our wives without telling us at a dinner party at his house. He was a friend of George's, and our dentist at the time. He just put it in our coffee or something. He didn't know what it was, it was just, 'It's all the thing,' with the middle-class London swingers. They had all heard about it and didn't know it was different from pot or pills. And they gave it to us, and he was saying, 'I advise you not to leave,' and we thought he was trying to keep us for an orgy in his house and we didn't want to know.
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I've always considered my work one piece and I consider that my work won't be finished until I am dead and buried and I hope that's a long, long time.
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"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."
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If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
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And Paul hits this chord, and I turn to him and say, 'That's it! Do that again!' In those days we really used to absolutely write like that - both playing into each other's noses.
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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.
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The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help.
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Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was.
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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.
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For our last number, I'd like to ask your help. Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.
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She forced me to become avant-garde and take my clothes off, when all I wanted was to be Tom Jones.
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Everything is as important as everything else.
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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.
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Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.
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Living is Easy with Eyes Closed.
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When we say 'War is over if you want it,' we mean that if everyone demanded peace instead of another TV set, we'd have peace.
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Very rich.
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If we took over Britain, then we'd have the job of cleaning up the bourgeoisie and keeping people in a revolutionary state of mind.
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I felt an obligation even then to write a song that people would sing in the pub or on a demonstration. That is why I would like to compose songs for the revolution.
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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.
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I think the music reflects the state that the society is in. It doesn't suggest the state. I think the poets and musicians and artists are of the age - not only do they lead the age on, but they also reflect that age. [...] Like The Beatles. We came out of Liverpool and we reflected our background and we reflected our thoughts in what we sang, and that's all people are doing.
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From our earliest days in Liverpool, George and I on the one hand and Paul on the other had different musical tastes. Paul preferred 'pop type' music and we preferred what is now called 'underground'. This may have led to arguments, particularly between Paul and George, but the contrast in tastes, I'm sure, did more good than harm, musically speaking, and contributed to our success.
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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.