A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
All we are saying is give peace a chance.
All you need is love.
And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he’s no longer God… They’ll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.
Anybody who knows our history knows that we went through all hell together – through miscarriages and terrible times.
As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.
Before Elvis there was nothing.
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.
Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.
Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace… we just need to declare it.
Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.
Everything is clearer when you’re in love.
Everything I’ve ever done is out. I don’t have boxes of unreleased stuff. There’s nothing in the files. I can never keep anything unless I don’t like the sound of it or it didn’t work. If I can sing it to an engineer, I can sing it to anyone.
For our last number, I’d like to ask your help. Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’ll, just rattle your jewelry.
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
Happiness is just how you feel when you don’t feel miserable.
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.
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?
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.
I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason!
I don’t believe in yesterday, by the way.
I don’t have any romanticism about any part of my past.
I don’t intend to be a performing flea any more. I was the dreamweaver, but although I’ll be around I don’t intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don’t want to die at 40.
I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.
I don’t mind people putting us down, because if everybody really liked us, it would be a bore.
I get by with a little help from my friends.
I learned lots of dirty jokes very young. There was this girl who told me them. The gang I led went in for shoplifting and pulling girls’ knickers down. Other boys’ parents hated me.
I really thought that love would save us all.
I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have gotten away with it. I’m sorry I opened my mouth. I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion.
I think the basic thing nobody asks is why do people takes drugs of any sort? And that question has to be resolved before you can think, well, what can we do for the poor drug addict? Why do we have to 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.
If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.
If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.
If The Beatles or the 60’s had a message, it was ‘Learn to swim. And once you’ve learned – swim!
If there’s such a thing as genius – I am one. And if there isn’t, I don’t care.
If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.
I’m dissatisfied with every record the Beatles ever fucking made. There ain’t one of them I wouldn’t remake.
I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.
I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.
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.
It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what color my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.
It is for others to judge. I am doing it. I do. I don’t stand back and judge – I do.
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.
It takes time to get rid of all this garbage that I’ve been carrying around that was influencing the way I thought and the way I lived.
It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You’d wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?
It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.
I’ve always considered my work one piece and I consider that my work won’t be finished until I am dead and buried and I hope that’s a long, long time.
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 to you while you’re busy making other plans.
Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.
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 on watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.
Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.
Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.
Love is you; you and me.
Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.
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.
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.
Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been the Beatles.
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.
Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.
Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.
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.
That’s part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don’t know how to handle humor. 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?
The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.
The idea of beetles came into my head. I decided to spell it Beatles to make it look like beat music, just a joke.
The more I see the less I know for sure.
The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.
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.
The time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.
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.
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…
These critics with the illusions they’ve created about artists – it’s like idol worship. They only like people when they’re on their way up… I cannot be on the way up again.
Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.
War is over… If you want it.
We haven’t been apart for more than one hour in two years. Everything we do is together, and that’s what gives us our strength.
We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.
We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD, by the way. Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn’t it? They brought out LSD to control people, and what they did was give us freedom.
We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.
We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.
We’ve broken down a few barriers between us, which we had to do because we had two big egos, two individual artists – and with love we overcame that.
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.
What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we’ll sink.
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.
When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.
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.
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.
Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.
You are all geniuses, and you are 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, live peace, and breathe peace, and you’ll get it as soon as you like.
You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!
You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.
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.
