Top 400 John Lennon Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “In one way, I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things people didn’t see. I always saw things in a hallucinatory way.”

— John Lennon

302. “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.”

— John Lennon

303. “I’ve never voted. I’ve never voted yet although I could have voted for the last ten years.”

— John Lennon

304. “Lack of feeling in an emotional sense is responsible for the way some singers do our songs. They don’t understand and are too old to grasp the feeling. Beatles are really the only people who can play Beatle music.”

— John Lennon

305. “I enjoyed it when football crowds in the early days would sing ‘All together now’ – that was another one. I was also pleased when the movement in America took up ‘Give peace a chance’ because I had written it with that in mind really.”

— John Lennon

306. “The world went mad and used us as an excuse.”

— John Lennon

307. “Music’s all right John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.”

— John Lennon

308. “We’re not disinterested in politics. It’s just that politicians are disinteresting.”

— John Lennon

309. “Love is you, you and me. Love is knowing we can be.”

— John Lennon

310. “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.”

— John Lennon

311. “If somebody gives me a joint, I might smoke it, but I don’t go after it.”

— John Lennon

312. “The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.”

— John Lennon

313. “I was a working-class macho guy who was used to being served and Yoko didn’t buy that. From the day I met her, she demanded equal time, equal space, equal rights.”

— John Lennon

314. “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

315. “I’ve always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo.”

— John Lennon

316. “I keep on reading the Morning Star newspaper to see if there’s any hope, but it seems to be in the 19th century; it seems to be written for dropped-out, middle-aged liberals.”

— John Lennon

317. “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

318. “I just sat all night looking at him, saying, ‘Wow, it’s incredible.’ When Yoko woke up, I told her, ‘He’s fine,’ and we cried.”

— John Lennon

319. “I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me.”

— John Lennon

320. “I could still be forgotten when I’m dead. I don’t really care what happens when I’m dead.”

— John Lennon

321. “I don’t intend to be a performing flea any more. I was the dreamweaver, but although I’ll be around I don’t intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don’t want to die at 40.”

— John Lennon

322. “Sarcasim is the lowest form of humor.”

— John Lennon

323. “The continual awareness of what was going on made me feel ashamed I wasn’t saying anything. I burst out because I could no longer play that game any more, it was just too much for me.”

— John Lennon

324. “You’re only awake when you realise you’re awake and when you’re dreaming, it is just as real, whatever happens is just as real – whether you actually do die in a dream or fulfil whatever you’re doing in a dream, it’s, there’s nobody to tell me it isn’t as real as this now, because how do you know?”

— John Lennon

325. “I’d like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority.”

— John Lennon

326. “The second political thing I did was to say ‘The Beatles are bigger than Jesus.’ That really broke the scene, I nearly got shot in America for that. It was a big trauma for all the kids that were following us.”

— John Lennon

327. “I wanna hold your gland.”

— John Lennon

328. “One more stage, one more limo, one more run for your life.”

— John Lennon

329. “That’s part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don’t know how to handle humor.”

— John Lennon

330. “I was different, I was always different. Why didn’t anybody notice me?”

— John Lennon

331. “I’ve withdrawn many times. Part of me is a monk, and part a performing flea! The fear in the music business is that you don’t exist if you’re not at Xenon with Andy Warhol.”

— John Lennon

332. “In Baby You’re A Rich Man the point was, stop moaning, you’re a rich man and we’re all rich, heh heh, baby!”

— John Lennon

333. “I always like the studio best, once I got the hang of it and the control. I like it because it’s complete control.”

— John Lennon

334. “The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.”

— John Lennon

335. “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

336. “My father and mother split and I never saw my father until I was 20, nor did I see much more of my mother.”

— John Lennon

337. “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.”

— John Lennon

338. “Music is everybody’s possession.”

— John Lennon

339. “Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn’t insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.”

— John Lennon

340. “I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything.”

— John Lennon

341. “It’s alright all of us all living saying ‘oh well there’s enough of us so we won’t have anymore, don’t let anybody else live.’ I don’t believe in that.”

— John Lennon

342. “The idea of beetles came into my head. I decided to spell it BEATles to make it look like beat music, just a joke.”

— John Lennon

343. “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

344. “As a child I did a lot of imaginary bits, you know. It depends on the individual, I enjoyed then knocking the nail in, I enjoy knocking nails in walls to hang pictures up, but I also enjoy thinking ‘I’m gonna do that’ but I actually won’t do it, I enjoy imagining doing things just as much.”

— John Lennon

345. “It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken onstage.”

— John Lennon

346. “I just like TV. I think to me, it replaced the fireplace when I was a child. They took the fire away and they put a TV in instead and I got hooked on it.”

— John Lennon

347. “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

348. “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

349. “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.”

— John Lennon

350. “What I’d have liked would have been the money and the hit records without the fame.”

— John Lennon