ON OCTOBER 9, 1940, Alfred and Julia Lennon welcomed John Winston Lennon into the world at Liverpool Maternity Hospital.
The son of a merchant seaman of Irish decent, John Lennon is rightly regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all-time alongside his Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney.
A special musician famed for his lyrical style, Lennon’s legacy lives on to this day in his words. Here are just a few of them.
- “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. “
- ”Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.”
- “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.”
- “As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.”
- “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 embrace life. “
- “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
- “Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace… we just need to declare it.”
- “If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create.”
- “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life.”
- “Living is easy with eyes closed.”
- “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? “
- “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.”
- “Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”
- “Before Elvis there was nothing.”
- “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life.”
- “There’s an alternative to violence. It’s to stay in bed and grow your hair.”
- “I don’t know which will go first- rock ‘n’ roll or christianity.”
- “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. “
- ” Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
- “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.”
(JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images)
- “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.”
- “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.”
- “We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.”
- “You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact.”
- ” Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
- “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.”
- “If everyone could just be happy with themselves and the choices people around them make, the world would instantly be a better place!“
- “I’m not really a career person; I’m a gardener, basically.”
- “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
- “I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car, and into another.”
- “Love, Love, Love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”
- “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.”
- “Only by trying on other people’s clothes do we find what size we are.”
- “Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.”
- “One thing you can’t hide – is when you’re crippled inside.”
(JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images)
- “Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”
- “How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?”
- “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!”
- “My defences 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.”
- “There is an alternative to war. It’s staying in bed and growing your hair.”
- “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
- “You know the way people begin to look like their dogs? Well, we’re beginning to look like each other.”
- “One thing I can tell you is you have to be free. Come together, right now, over me.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “War is over … If you want it.”
- “Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “You know the way people begin to look like their dogs? Well, we’re beginning to look like each other.”
- “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.”
- “When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.”
- “…Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I don’t know what will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. We’re more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
- “Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.”
( MYCHELE DANIAU/AFP/Getty Images)
- “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.”
- “Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.”
- “Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.”
- “If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”
- “I believe Jesus was right, Buddha was right, and all of those people like that are right. They’re all saying the same thing — and I believe it. I believe what Jesus actually said — the basic things he laid down about love and goodness — and not what people say he said.”
- “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.”
- “Nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that’s just barely possible.”
- “I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!”
- “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.”
- “Everything is as important as everything else.”
- “We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?”
- “Time wounds all heels.”
- “What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we’ll sink.”
- “I don’t believe in yesterday, by the way.”
- “What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we’ll sink.”
- “Art is only a way of expressing pain.”
- “It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.”
(Photo by Mark and Colleen Hayward/Getty Images)
- “I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.”
- “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.”
- “Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.”
See More: John Lennon, Music, The Beatles
