John Lennon quotes: this dude knew how to string words together. Sheesh.
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
“You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. It’s all down to you, mate. Make your own dream.”
“You won’t get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it.”
“What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it, we’ll sink.”
“Produce your own dream. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not if you put it on the leaders and the parking meters. You have to do it yourself.”
“There’s nothing new under the sun. 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.”
“Creativity is a gift. It doesn’t come through if the air is cluttered.”
“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.”
“There are no problems, only solutions.”
“A mistake is only an error. It becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it.”
“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.”
“Everything is as important as everything else.”
“There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.”
“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.”
“When I was five 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.”
“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.”
“You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!”
“Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friends.”
“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.”
“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.”
“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.”
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
“Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I wouldn’t say I was a born writer; I’m a born thinker. 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.”
“The best stuff usually comes out on impulse. Or inspiration. And I hardly have to think about it. But I am always writing. In the back of my head, or if somebody says something, I’m storing it away—a line, or an idea. There is never a moment when I’m not writing, almost. Although I don’t think I’m writing. There’s a specific time when I just sit down and write.”
“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 embrace life.”
“If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I am just some guy who did… whatever. Always see me as me. I was always me, all the way through it.”
“Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”
“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.”
“I was asked in an interview which was more important: money or love? I told the interviewer that if he had to ask the question, he wouldn’t understand the answer.”
“I don’t live it down. I’ve lived it down, played it both ways. Especially when you first get money: you live it up. I had all the biggest cars in the world, and I don’t even like cars. I bought everything that I could buy. The only thing that I never got into is yachts. So, I went through that period. There is nothing else to do once you do it. I just live however makes me most comfortable.”
“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.”
“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”
“Love, love, love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”
“Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.”
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
“The more I see, the less I know for sure.”
“I believe in everything until it’s disproved.”
“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.”
“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.”
“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”
“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
“Let it be.”
Related: Paul McCartney quotes.
