Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John Lennon (British Singer)

John Winston Lennon (1940–80) was an English rock legend, guitarist, and songwriter. He was the founding member of the Beatles, the most influential music band of the rock era. He wrote most of the Beatles songs in association with Paul McCartney.

A native of Liverpool, Lennon did not show much musical inclination as a child. He was smart but often got into trouble for his angry streak, petty crimes, and rebellious attitude.

At age 16, Lennon listened to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other rock-and-roll legends whose records were brought over by American sailors docking at the Liverpool port. Fascinated by rock and roll music, Lennon formed his band with several friends and called it the Quarrymen.

Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church party in the summer of 1957. They became fast friends after Lennon learned that McCartney could not only tune and play the guitar but also recall the lyrics of the latest rock and roll songs. The two formed a legendary songwriting partnership that composed 180 songs. After McCartney’s friend George Harrison joined them in 1958, they formed the Beatals, which they later renamed Silver Beetles and finally the Beatles. Drummer Pete Best enlisted in 1960.

The Beatles played at various clubs around England and in Hamburg, Germany. They then returned to England and played at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, where businessman Brian Epstein discovered them. After signing up as their manager, Epstein signed the Beatles with EMI records in 1962 and had drummer Pete Best replaced by Ringo Starr. By 1963, the Beatles were the most famous rock and roll band in England. The following year, they took America by storm with their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. ‘Beatlemania’ swept across Europe and America.; the Beatles’ every movement was sure to be accompanied by crowds of screaming young girls and enthusiastic admirers.

Lennon was the Beatles’ most controversial member. His 1966 statement, “The Beatles are bigger than Jesus Christ,” instigated a religious counterattack in the United States. During the later 1960s, he used his celebrity to draw attention to various political causes and feminism. His vehement denunciation of the Vietnam War resulted in a protracted—but unsuccessful—effort by the Nixon administration to deport him from his adopted hometown of New York. His single “Give Peace a Chance” became the anti-Vietnam-War anthem in 1969.

Lennon married Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono in 1969. When the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon embarked on a successful solo career. After the birth of their son Sean Ono Lennon in 1975, Lennon retired from public life and stayed home with family.

In 1980, Lennon was assassinated by a mentally disturbed fan who had asked Lennon for his autograph only hours earlier. A few days later, Ono organized over 100,000 people gathered in New York’s Central Park and thousands of others around the world to observe a 10-minute silence to honor him. A section of Central Park is designated “Strawberry Fields” in his memory.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Lennon

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
Topics: Love, Feelings

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.
—John Lennon

Always remember this: ‘A kiss will never miss, and after many kisses a miss becomes a misses’.
—John Lennon
Topics: Kiss

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
Topics: Fear

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.
—John Lennon

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
—John Lennon
Topics: Truth

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.
—John Lennon
Topics: Ambition, Getting Ahead

Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.
—John Lennon
Topics: Marriage

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.
—John Lennon
Topics: Feelings, Love

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? Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
—John Lennon
Topics: Belief, Reality, Imagination

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.
—John Lennon
Topics: Religion, Christianity, Christians

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
Topics: Insanity, Madness

The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it’s unknown, and it’s plain sailing.
—John Lennon
Topics: Acceptance, Fear, Doubt, Uncertainty

We’ve been on our peace gig, as we call it, for a year solid. And people say, ‘Do you think it’s having any effect?’ I can’t answer that. It’s like asking me in the Cavern, ‘Are you gonna make it?’ In the back of my mind I thought, I’m gonna make it, but I couldn’t lay it on the line. And I think that peace is more tangible than Beatles.
—John Lennon

Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.
—John Lennon
Topics: Nature, Living, Goals, Luck, Planning, Life, Busy

I realized that kids everywhere go for the same stuff; and seeing as we’d done it in England, there’s no reason why we couldn’t do it in America too.
—John Lennon

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
—John Lennon
Topics: Peace

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.
—John Lennon
Topics: Love

A dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality.
—John Lennon

My role in society, or any artist 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
Topics: The Artist

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot
—John Lennon

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.
—John Lennon
Topics: Television

When you’re thirty-five, you can’t take as much booze … and I always got a little violent on drink…So it was kind of self-destructive suicide side of me, which is resolving itself for the better, I believe, because I never enjoyed it…
—John Lennon
Topics: Drinking

And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let’s stop all the fight.
—John Lennon
Topics: Racism, Race

All we are saying is give peace a chance…
—John Lennon
Topics: Peace

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
Topics: Twentieth Century

I resent performing for frisking idiots who don’t know anything.
—John Lennon
Topics: Music

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?
—John Lennon
Topics: Drugs

Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.
—John Lennon
Topics: Work

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
—John Lennon
Topics: Dreams

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