1. When you’re drowning you don’t think, I would be incredibly pleased if someone would notice I’m drowning and come and rescue me. You just scream.

- John Lennon

2. Only by trying on other people’s clothes do we find what size we are.

- John Lennon

3. 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 Lennon

4. Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

- John Lennon

5. How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?

- John Lennon

6. I don’t believe in yesterday, by the way.

- John Lennon

7. We’ve got this gift of love, but 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 watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

- John Lennon

8. As far as I’m concerned, there won’t be a Beatles reunion as long as John Lennon remains dead.

- John Lennon

9. It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.

- John Lennon

10. When I was 5 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

11. 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

12. Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

- John Lennon

13. Living is easy with eyes closed.

- John Lennon

14. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

- John Lennon

15. I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!

- John Lennon

16. Everything is as important as everything else.

- John Lennon

17. You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact.

- John Lennon

18. Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.

- John Lennon

19. 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

20. 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

21. Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace… we just need to declare it.

- John Lennon

22. There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life.

- John Lennon

23. I’m not really a career person; I’m a gardener, basically.

- John Lennon

24. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create.

- John Lennon

25. 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

26. John Lennon was definitely my favorite Beatle, hands down.

- John Lennon

27. Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

- John Lennon

28. I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.

- John Lennon

29. We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?

- John Lennon

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

- John Lennon

31. If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.

- John Lennon

32. What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we’ll sink.

- John Lennon

33. All we are saying is give peace a chance.

- John Lennon

34. I don’t know which will go first- rock ‘n’ roll or christianity.

- John Lennon

35. Before Elvis there was nothing.

- John Lennon

36. 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 embra

- John Lennon

37. When people ask me who I’d want to have dinner with, dead or alive, I always say, ‘John Lennon.’ I just feel that he was an artist who was, in his own way, committed to wholeness and authenticity in a not dissimilar way that I am years later.

- John Lennon

38. Love, Love, Love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.

- John Lennon

39. If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

- John Lennon

40. If everyone could just be happy with themselves and the choices people around them make, the world would instantly be a better place!

- John Lennon

41. 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

42. Imagine all the people living life in peace. 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 be as one.

- John Lennon

43. 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

44. As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

- John Lennon

45. Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.

- John Lennon

46. Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.

- John Lennon

47. Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.

- John Lennon

48. You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

- John Lennon

49. There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…

- John Lennon

50. If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

- John Lennon

51. 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

52. War is over… If you want it.

- John Lennon

53. Art is only a way of expressing pain.

- John Lennon

54. There is an alternative to war. It’s staying in bed and growing your hair.

- John Lennon

55. One thing you can’t hide – is when you’re crippled inside.

- John Lennon

56. There’s an alternative to violence. It’s to stay in bed and grow your hair.

- John Lennon

57. 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

58. When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.

- John Lennon

59. 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

60. 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

61. 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

62. 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.

- John Lennon

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

- John Lennon

64. It’s a cliche, but John Lennon is my hero. He was so rebellious, so outspoken and so publicly opinionated, and I’m someone who’s so private. I suppose you admire people who have the qualities you wish you had.

- John Lennon

65. I’ve never really been wanted.

- John Lennon

66. Time wounds all heels.

- John Lennon

67. Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.

- John Lennon

68. 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

69. Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

- John Lennon

70. God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

- John Lennon

71. Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that’s just barely possible.

- John Lennon

72. 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

73. It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

- John Lennon

74. My husband John Lennon was a very special man. A man of humble origin, he brought light and hope to the whole world with his words and music.

- John Lennon

75. There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.

- John Lennon

76. 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

77. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

- John Lennon

78. One thing I can tell you is you have to be free. Come together, right now, over me.

- John Lennon

79. John Lennon was a musical genius. All I have to do is think of some of his songs and even the titles make me feel good… and I’m not the only one. His music has crossed cultures and even generations.

- John Lennon

80. 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

81. If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

- John Lennon

82. Sometimes you wonder, I mean really wonder. I know we make our own reality, and we always have a choice, but how much is preordained? Is there always a fork in the road, and are there two preordained paths that are equally preordained? There could be hundreds of paths where one could go this way or that way — there’s a chance, and it’s very strange sometimes.

- John Lennon

83. We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.

- John Lennon

84. 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

85. I think what made John Lennon so exciting as an artist is that, like Dylan and other musicians with a truly important musical legacy, he had several faces, personas that changed over time as he developed.

- John Lennon

86. You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

- John Lennon