John Lennon

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

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

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.

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…

He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

The first [task of the Pentagon] is to preserve an international system in which what are called American interests – which primarily means business interests, can flourish.

He told me was seeking contributions to the Jimmy Carter Library. I asked how much he had in mind. And he said, Donald, I would be very appreciative if you contributed five million dollars.I was dumbfounded. I didn’t even answer him.But that experience also taught me something.Until then, I’d never understood how Jimmy Carter became president. The answer is that as poorly qualified he was for the job, Jimmy Carter had the nerve, the guts, the balls, to ask for something extraordinary. That ability above all helped him get elected president.

We have a tax-raising power in Scotland but not in English regions. I want genuine regional taxation powers [in England].

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

Hamas is regularly described as ‘Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.’ One will be hard put to find something like ‘democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus’-blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.

… This phenomenon has its place in the world, and it’s developing. We need to monitor and analyze what’s going on thoroughly. And at some stage we will need to look at how we can take part in this process, how we can use it to avoid all sorts of restrictions in the sphere of international financial activity, among other things.

Over the last 25 years, the major popular movements that have had significant impact on the general society and have changed it, that have had a major civilizing effect – the feminist movement, the environmental movement, and so on – these are mostly developments of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Their roots might be in the activism of the ‘60s, but the movements themselves developed and extended later. The same is true of the changes in respect for other cultures, rights of oppressed people, and so on. These are quite significant changes. If you compare the United States now to what it was, say, 35 years ago, the changes are quite dramatic. These are changes in popular consciousness that are quite deeply embedded.

It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.

Mexico continues to make billions on not only our bad trade deals but also relies heavily on the billions of dollars in remittances sent from illegal immigrants in the United States.

So for example, worker- and community- controlled enterprises are germs of a future society within the present one. And those not only can be developed, but are being developed.

I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, and anti-racism.

The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

I don’t respond in any way to personal abuse that is thrown at me.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.