200+ Of The Best John Lennon Quotes, Words, and Statements

John Winston Ono Lennon was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles.

John Lennon Quotes

1. Everything is clearer when you’re in love. – John Lennon
2. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. – John Lennon
3. Happiness is a good vibe for peace. – John Lennon
4. Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who can control me is me, and even that’s barely possible. – John Lennon
5. 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. – John Lennon
6. I want you to make love, not war, I know you’ve heard it before. – John Lennon
7. Am I crazy or am I a genius? I don’t think I’m either. – John Lennon
8. There are no problems, only solutions. – John Lennon
9. In ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ I was visualizing Alice in Wonderland, an image of this female who would come and save me – a girl with kaleidoscope eyes who would be the real love of my life. Lucy turned out to be Yoko. – John Lennon
10. Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears. – John Lennon
11. Don’t hate what you don’t understand! – John Lennon
12. If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles. – John Lennon
13. Elvis died the day he went into the army. – John Lennon
14. Nothing is real. – John Lennon
15. Love is the greatest refreshment in life. – John Lennon
16. Come together, right now. – John Lennon
17. I would like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition. – John Lennon
18. Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity. – John Lennon
19. I am the eggman They are the eggmen! I am the walrus! – John Lennon
20. The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees; I want money. – John Lennon
21. When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream. – John Lennon
22. We’re mostly macrobiotic, but sometimes I take the family out for a pizza. – John Lennon
23. I am going into an unknown future, but I’m still all here, and still while there’s life, there’s hope. – John Lennon
24. When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind. – John Lennon
25. The more I see, the less I know for sure. – John Lennon
26. Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These. – John Lennon
27. The establishment irritates you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight because once they’ve got you violent they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor. – John Lennon
28. Happiness is inside you, not with another person. – John Lennon
29. I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The trouble is they are not aware they can get it. – John Lennon
30. Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted. – John Lennon
31. How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing? – John Lennon
32. It’s like being possessed: like a psychic or a medium. I felt like a hollow temple filled with many spirits, each one passing through me, each inhabiting me for a little time and then leaving to be replaced by another. – John Lennon
33. We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once? – John Lennon
34. Instant Karma’s gonna get you, gonna knock you right on the head. – John Lennon
35. All we are saying is give peace a chance. – John Lennon
36. You say you want a revolution? Well, you know. We all want to change the world. – John Lennon
37. Remember to let her into your heart. – John Lennon
38. Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It’s all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group. – John Lennon
39. Always remember this: ‘A kiss will never miss, and after many kisses a miss becomes a misses.’ – John Lennon
40. There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be… – John Lennon
41. Don’t need a gun to blow your mind. – John Lennon
42. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy. – John Lennon
43. I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it’s fantastic. Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind you’re left with great precision. – John Lennon
44. Time wounds all heels. – John Lennon
45. When I started, rock and roll itself was the basic revolution to people of my age and situation. We needed something loud and clear to break through all the unfeeling and repression that had been coming down on us kids. – John Lennon
46. If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence. – John Lennon
47. 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
48. All I want is the truth, just give me some truth. – John Lennon
49. The more real you get the more unreal the world gets. – John Lennon
50. 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
51. Imagine all the people living life in peace… – John Lennon
52. What I’m trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All those who are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in their mind. The acid dream is over, that is what I’m trying to tell them. – John Lennon
53. A Conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words. – John Lennon
54. Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people Sharing all the world. – John Lennon
55. Make love, not war. – John Lennon
56. What Can I Tell You about Myself which You Have Not Already Found Out from Those Who Do Not Lie? – John Lennon
57. A day spent wasting time, that you enjoyed, is not time wasted… – John Lennon
58. Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. – John Lennon
59. 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
60. A working class hero is something to be. – John Lennon
61. God is a concept by which we measure our pain. – John Lennon
62. Like Paul Kraston said, all I ask in life is a water bed, a TV and a typewriter. Well, I’ll just have an ordinary bed, a TV and a guitar. – John Lennon
63. 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
64. 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. – John Lennon
65. And So This Is Christmas; And What Have We Done? Another Year Over; A New One Just Begun; And So Happy Christmas; I Hope You Have Fun; The Near And The Dear Ones; The Old And The Young. – John Lennon
66. The dream is over. I gotta get down to reality. The good old days is garbage. – John Lennon
67. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one. – John Lennon
68. A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. – John Lennon
69. The sun is up, the sky is blue It’s beautiful, and so are you. – John Lennon
70. Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you. – John Lennon
71. One day at a time is all we do. One day at a time is good for you. – John Lennon
72. You’re born in pain and pain is what we’re in most of the time. And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need. – John Lennon
73. Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it. – John Lennon
74. Nothing happened in the sixties except that we all dressed up. – John Lennon
75. Before Elvis there was nothing. – John Lennon
76. Creativity is a gift. It doesn’t come through if the air is cluttered. – John Lennon
77. At Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain. – John Lennon
78. Please don’t spoil my day; I’m miles away and, after all, I’m only sleeping. – John Lennon
79. They hit you at school, they hate you if your clever, and they despise a fool. – John Lennon
80. 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
81. 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
82. 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
83. It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what color my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man. – John Lennon
84. Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream. – John Lennon
85. Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friends. – John Lennon
86. No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me With just a pocketful of soap. – John Lennon
87. Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis there would be no Beatles. – John Lennon
88. 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 Lenno
89. I don’t know how much money I’ve got. I did ask the accountant how much it came to. I wrote it down on a bit of paper. But I’ve lost the bit of paper. – John Lennon
90. I still believe in peace, love, and understanding. – John Lennon
91. 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
92. We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight. – John Lennon
93. Control yourself. You’ll spurt. – John Lennon
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. One thing you can’t hide – is when you’re crippled inside. – John Lennon
96. 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
97. Peace in your mind, peace on earth, peace at work, peace at home, peace in the world. – John Lennon
98. The magic of the music seems to light the way. – John Lennon
99. Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones. – John Lennon
100. Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on earth are you there, when you’re everywhere-come and get your share. – John Lennon
101. You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are! – John Lennon
102. 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
103. Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was. – John Lennon
104. Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on across the universe. – John Lennon
105. I don’t expect you to understand after you’ve caused so much pain, but then again-you’re not to blame; you’re just human-a victim of the insane. – John Lennon
106. There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme. – John Lennon
107. 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
108. The people have the power. All we have to do is awaken the power in the people. – John Lennon
109. The only reason I went for that goal is that I wanted to say: ‘Now, mummy-daddy, will you love me?’ – John Lennon
110. It’s weird not to be weird. – John Lennon
111. No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go. – John Lennon
112. Violence begets violence, you know. And you can’t kill off all the violent people or all the murderers. We’d have to kill off the government. – John Lennon
113. I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me. – John Lennon
114. Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem. – John Lennon
115. When you cross the street, take my hand. – John Lennon
116. 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
117. All you need is love. – John Lennon
118. 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
119. Happiness Is A Warm Gun not about heroin. A gun magazine was sitting there with a smoking gun on the cover and an article that I never read inside called ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun.’ I took it right from there. I took it as the terrible idea of just having shot some animal. – John Lennon
120. We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. – John Lennon
121. If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal. – John Lennon
122. 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. – John Lennon
123. 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. – John Lennon
124. Everything is clearer when you’re in love. – John Lennon
125. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. – John Lennon
126. Happiness is a good vibe for peace. – John Lennon
127. Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who can control me is me, and even that’s barely possible. – John Lennon
128. 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. – John Lennon
129. I want you to make love, not war, I know you’ve heard it before. – John Lennon
130. Am I crazy or am I a genius? I don’t think I’m either. – John Lennon
131. There are no problems, only solutions. – John Lennon
132. Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident. – John Lennon
133. 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
134. Money can’t buy me love. – John Lennon
135. The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people. It controls them. – John Lennon
136. When I was 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
137. Life is what happens to you while you’re planning on doing something else. – John Lennon
138. 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
139. I get by with a little help from my friends. – John Lennon
140. You can manicure a cat but can you caticure a man? – John Lennon
141. Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out It doesn’t matter much to me. – John Lennon
142. Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear. – John Lennon
143. You can only breathe out if you breathe in. – John Lennon
144. If I’d lived in Roman times, I’d have lived in Rome. Where else? Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself. – John Lennon
145. We are all Christ and Hitler. Yoko and I want Christ to win. – John Lennon
146. Women should be obscene and not heard. – John Lennon
147. Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty. – John Lennon
148. It seems that all revolutions end up with a personality cult – even the Chinese seem to need a father-figure. – John Lennon
149. When I hold you in my arms and I feel my finger on your trigger I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun. – John Lennon
150. 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
151. What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we’ll sink. – John Lennon
152. 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
153. Tame birds sing of freedom. Wild birds fly. – John Lennon
154. I never went to high school reunions. My thing is, out of sight, out of mind. That’s my attitude toward life. So I don’t have any romanticism about any part of my past. – John Lennon
155. Trying to please everybody is impossible – if you did that, you’d end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You’ve just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it. – John Lennon
156. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. – John Lennon
157. Don’t believe that jazz about there’s nothing you can do, turn on and drop out, man – because you’ve got to turn on and drop in, or they’re going to drop all over you. – John Lennon
158. We’re all God. I’m not a god or the God, but we’re all God and we’re all potentially divine-and potentially evil. – John Lennon
159. 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
160. I can’t remember anything without a sadness so deep that it hardly becomes known to me, so deep that its tears leave me a spectator of my own stupidity. – John Lennon
161. 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. – John Lennon
162. I can’t play guitar, but I can sure make it howl. – John Lennon
163. Tell the truth and make it rhyme. – John Lennon
164. I’ll probably be popped off by some loony. – John Lennon
165. Whatever gets you through the night. – John Lennon
166. Love is real, real is love. – John Lennon
167. 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
168. If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace. – John Lennon
169. I don’t stand back and judge – I do. – John Lennon
170. Happiness is a warm gun. – John Lennon
171. Art is only a way of expressing pain. – John Lennon
172. 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
173. Pools of sorrow. Waves of joy. – John Lennon
174. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, I told them they didn’t understand life. – John Lennon
175. Music touching my soul, the spirit dance was unfolding. – John Lennon
176. You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die. – John Lennon
177. When they’ve tortured and scared you for odd years, then they expect you to pick a career. – John Lennon
178. Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun. – John Lennon
179. A mistake is only an error. It becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it. – John Lennon
180. Millions of mind guerrillas, raising the spirit of peace and love, not war. – John Lennon
181. Mother, you had me, but I never had you. – John Lennon
182. The first drugs I ever took, I was still at art school, with the group – we all took it together – was Benzedrine from the inside of an inhaler. – John Lennon
183. Love is like a flower – you’ve got to let it grow. – John Lennon
184. Don’t let them fool you with dope and cocaine, can’t do you know harm to feel your own pain. – John Lennon
185. I really thought that love would save us all. – John Lennon
186. 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
187. I’ll be a good boy, please make me well. I promise you anything, get me out of this hell. Cold turkey has got me on the run. – John Lennon
188. I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book. – John Lennon
189. As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot. – John Lennon
190. I was feeling insecure you might not love me anymore. – John Lennon
191. Music is everybody’s business. It’s only the publishers who think people own it. – John Lennon
192. In ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ I was visualizing Alice in Wonderland, an image of this female who would come and save me – a girl with kaleidoscope eyes who would be the real love of my life. Lucy turned out to be Yoko. – John Lennon
193. Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears. – John Lennon
194. Don’t hate what you don’t understand! – John Lennon
195. If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles. – John Lennon
196. Elvis died the day he went into the army. – John Lennon
197. Nothing is real. – John Lennon
198. Love is the greatest refreshment in life. – John Lennon
199. You won’t get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it. – John Lennon
200. Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end. – John Lennon
201. I’m not saying we’re better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person, or God as a thing, or whatever it is. I just said what I said, and it was wrong, or it was taken wrong. And now it’s all this. – John Lennon
202. You can go to church and sing a hymn, Judge me by the color of my skin, You can live a lie until you die, One thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside. – John Lenno
203. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. – John Lennon
204. Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go. – John Lennon
205. Free all the prisoners everywhere, all they want is truth and justice, all they need is love and care. – John Lennon
206. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out. – John Lennon
207. I cannot be what I am not. – John Lennon
208. 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. – John Lennon