John Lennon

I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.

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.

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.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

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.

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans –which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval.

Sometimes if I see negative things it really doesn’t faze me, because you’ve got to be tough and you’ve got to be you.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

There’s a great joy in my giving. It’s thrilling. It’s exhilarating. It’s important to be a part of sharing. It is my love. It is my joy.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.