John Lennon

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

The more real you get, the more unreal everything else is.

It just was a gradual development over the years. I mean last year was ‘all you need is Love.’ This year, it’s ‘all you need is Love and peace, baby.’ Give peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull together. You’re all geniuses, and you’re all beautiful. You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you’ll get it as soon as you like.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

I’ve had the boyhood thing of being Elvis. Now I want to be with my best friend, and my best friend’s my wife. Who could ask for anything more?

The worst drugs are as bad as anybody’s told you. It’s just a dumb trip, which I can’t condemn people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one’s own personal, social, emotional reasons. It’s something to be avoided if one can help it.

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

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.

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.

Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Children, Fear God; that is to say, have an holy awe upon your minds to avoid that which is evil, and a strict care to embrace and do that which is good.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.

I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t.

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.

Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize in our own being, we are enough.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear.