John Lennon was one of the lead members of the English rock band, The Beatles. As a singer, songwriter, and peace activist, Lennon has touched many lives through his music, lyrics, and art.
Born in 1940, Lennon’s parents Alfred and Julia raised him briefly. However, their turbulent relationship led them to neglect Lennon. Eventually, young Lennon grew up under the care of Julia’s sister, his aunt, Mimi. Though Mimi was a caring yet stern guardian to Lennon, she discouraged his affinity to music. It was Julia who supported his talent and gave him his first guitar.
In his teenage years, Lennon formed the Quarrymen band, with Paul McCartney. It was this band that would soon be known as “The Beatles.” With the addition of George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the group achieved mainstream success in the UK in 1963. Together with the other three members of the band, Lennon was appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire, a recognition they received during the Queen’s Birthday Honors 1965.
After years of releasing albums like Help!, A Hard Day’s Night, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with the Beatles, Lennon left the band at September 1969. With Yoko Ono, he produced dozens of records, including his most famous single, “Imagine.”
Though profoundly successful with his career, Lennon had trouble with his personal life. He wasn’t a good husband and father to his first wife and son, Cynthia Powell and Julian. In 1968, Lennon divorced Cynthia. He then married Ono a year later in Gibraltar. However, they separated for over a year.
Upon reuniting with Ono, they would soon have a son named Sean in October 1975. Lennon then began the five-year hiatus of his music career to be a full-time househusband and raised Sean.
In 1980, 40-year-old John Lennon started making songs again. However, his return to music ended after a deranged fan shot him on December 8, 1980. Though despite his sudden death, Lennon’s legacy lives on through his music.
Imagine what the world today would be like if John Lennon was still alive as you read through his quotes and sayings that show his views on love, life, peace, God, and more.
Table of Contents
John Lennon Quotes About Love
1. “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.”
2. “All you need is love.”
3. “Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.”
4. “If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”
5. “Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.”
6. “Everything is clearer when you’re in love.”
John Lennon Quotes About Life and Peace
1. “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.”
2. “You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.”
3. “I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!”
4. “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”
5. “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
6. “I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.”
7. “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.”
8. “If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
John Lennon Quotes About God
1. “We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”
2. “Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
3. “And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he’s no longer God… They’ll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.”
4. “Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”
5. “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
6. “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.”
7. “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.”
8. “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, More Quotes and Sayings
1. “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
2. “The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.”
3. “The more I see, the less I know for sure.”
4. “Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.”
5. “You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!”
6. “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.”
7. “These critics with the illusions they’ve created about artists – it’s like idol worship. They only like people when they’re on their way up… I cannot be on the way up again.”
8. “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
9. “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.”
10. “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.”
11. “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.”
12. “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.”
13. “It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You’d wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?”
14. “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.”
15. “It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.”
16. “Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.”
17. “I believe time wounds all heels.”
18. “There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.”
19. “The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.”
20. “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.”
21. “Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.”
22. “Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.”
23. “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?”
24. “As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.”
25. “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.”
26. “You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.”
27. “Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.”
28. “The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?”
29. “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.”
30. “Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.”
31. “Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.”
32. “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.”
If you’d like to know more about John Lennon’s life, we recommend that you read his biography Being John Lennon by Ray Connolly.