Quotes By John Lennon

I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another.

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.

Carrying the Beatles or the '60s dream around all your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or the Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion.

I've got used to the fact-just about- that whatever I do is going to be compared to the other Beatles. If I took up ballet dancing, my ballet dancing would be compared with Paul's bowling.

I think Mick [Jagger] got jealous. I was always very respectful about Mick and the Stones but he said a lot of tarty things about the Beatles, which I am hurt by. I'd like to just list what we did and what the Stones did two months after on every f***king album... he imitates us.

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.

People are afraid of Beatle music. They are still afraid of my songs. Because they got that big image thing: You can't do a Beatle number... You can't touch a Lennon song; only Lennon can do it... It's garbage! Anybody can do anything. A few people in the past have done Beatle songs. But in general they feel you can't touch them. And there are so many good singles that the Beatles wrote that were never released. Why don't people do them? It's good for me; it's good for Paul. It's good for all of us.

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.

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

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

Just before I record, I go buy a few albums to see what people are doing. Whether they have improved any, or whether anything happened. And nothing's really happened. There's a lot of great guitarists and musicians around, but nothing's happening, you know.

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.

I write songs because that's the thing I chose to do. And I can't help writing them, that's a fact. Sometimes I felt as though you worked to justify your existence, but you don't; you work to exist, and vice versa, and that's it, really.

It's quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald 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.

I hope we're a nice old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that-looking at our scrapbook of madness.

One of my big things is that I wish to be a fisherman. I know it sounds silly ​and I'd sooner be rich than poor, and all the rest of that... but I wish the pain was ignorance or bliss or something.

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?

I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. I used to wonder whether I'm a genius or I'm not, which is it? I used to think, well, I can't be mad, because nobody's put me away, therefore, I'm a genius. A genius is a form of madness, and we're all that way, you know, and I used to be a bit coy about it, like my guitar playing.

When you do something 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.

I'm a Loser,' 'Help,' 'Strawberry Fields,' they are all personal records. I always wrote about me when I could. I didn't really enjoy writing third person songs about people who lived in concrete flats and things like that. I like first person music. But because of my hang-ups and many other things; I would only now and then specifically write about me.