Top 400 John Lennon Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

353. “My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn’t know how to cry. Simple.”

— John Lennon

354. “Reporter lady: What’s that color? John: Hm. I’d call this a color!”

— John Lennon

355. “He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.”

— John Lennon

356. “My original idea for the cover was better – decapitate Paul – but he wouldn’t go along with it.”

— John Lennon

357. “Why is everyone telling me to do it? I already did it.”

— John Lennon

358. “People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine.”

— John Lennon

359. “I’m an Elvis fan because it was Elvis who really got me out of Liverpool.”

— John Lennon

360. “The reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up.”

— John Lennon

361. “Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

— John Lennon

362. “How poetry comes to the poet is a mystery.”

— John Lennon

363. “It’s pretty hard when you are Caesar and everyone is saying how wonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and the girls, it’s pretty hard to break out of that, to say ‘Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.’”

— John Lennon

364. “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.”

— John Lennon

365. “I’m a moldy moldy man I’m moldy thru and thru I’m a moldy moldy man You would not think it true I’m moldy til my eyeballs I’m moldy til my toe I will not dance I shyballs I’m such a humble Joe.”

— John Lennon

366. “Imagine there’s no varmints. It isn’t hard to do.”

— John Lennon

367. “You’re jeans are full of crap. You’re full of beans, you’re in you teens. You’ve lost your mama’s road map.”

— John Lennon

368. “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.”

— John Lennon

369. “We’d also have to infiltrate the army too, because they are well trained to kill us all.”

— John Lennon

370. “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

371. “I’ve had the boyhood thing of being Elvis. Now I want to be with my best friend and my best friend is my wife. Who could ask for anything more?”

— John Lennon

372. “Some people say it’s a when you get older fans the kids don’t like you. It’s true.”

— John Lennon

373. “I don’t purchase records. I do enjoy listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music.”

— John Lennon

374. “The greatest artists always come round to simplicity.”

— John Lennon

375. “You know the way people begin to look like their dogs? Well, we’re beginning to look like each other.”

— John Lennon

376. “You don’t have to be some sort of freak to meditate.”

— John Lennon

377. “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

378. “There is not one thing that’s Beatle music. How can they talk about it like that? What is Beatle music? Walrus or Penny Lane? Which? It’s too diverse: I Want to Hold Your Hand or Revolution Number Nine?”

— John Lennon

379. “Rituals are important.”

— John Lennon

380. “We were always going to dump him when we found a decent drummer.”

— John Lennon

381. “I don’t mind looking to the camera -? it’s people that throw me.”

— John Lennon

382. “I believe in everything until it’s disproved.”

— John Lennon

383. “I think middle-class people have the biggest trauma if they have nice imagey parents, all smiling and dolled up.”

— John Lennon

384. “It was very romantic. It’s all in the song, The Ballad of John and Yoko. If you want to know how it happened, it’s in there. Gibraltar was like a little sunny dream. I couldn’t find a white suit -? I had sort of off-white corduroy trousers and a white jacket. Yoko had all white on.”

— John Lennon

385. “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

386. “As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it’s happening.”

— John Lennon

387. “I began to realise that we are all oppressed which is why I would like to do something about it, though I’m not sure where my place is.”

— John Lennon

388. “Slipping? We’re bigger than Jesus.”

— John Lennon

389. “I feel now at 53 I have grown into a deeper understanding of what a human life is.”

— John Lennon

390. “After The Beatles came on the scene everyone started putting on a Liverpudlian accent.”

— John Lennon

391. “I must say the more interesting songs to me were the black ones because they were more simple.”

— John Lennon

392. “Everything they told me as a kid has already been disproved by the same type of “experts” who made them up in the first place.”

— John Lennon

393. “We put a President up there, and then we set fire to him because he’s not solving all our problems.”

— John Lennon

394. “Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.”

— John Lennon

395. “Now The Beatles are four separate people, we don’t have the impact we had when we were together.”

— John Lennon

396. “I don’t miss it. I’m glad it happened, but I don’t miss it.”

— John Lennon

397. “They’ll never be able to forget us.”

— John Lennon

398. “Nothing really affected me until Elvis.”

— John Lennon

399. “I think a lot of bad things have happened in the name of the church and in the name of Christ and therefore I shy away from church.”

— John Lennon

400. “Once the new power has taken over they have to establish a new status quo just to keep the factories and trains running.”

— John Lennon