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

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

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

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

When I hold you in my arms and I feel my finger on your trigger I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun.
—John Lennon
Topics: War

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.
—John Lennon
Topics: Meaning, Purpose

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

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.
—John Lennon
Topics: Twentieth Century

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

People think the Beatles know what’s going on. We don’t. We’re just doing it.
—John Lennon
Topics: Ignorance

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

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery.
—John Lennon
Topics: Humor

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
—John Lennon
Topics: God, Religion

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

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: Christianity, Religion, Christians

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
—John Lennon
Topics: Christianity, Religion

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

The more I see the less I know for sure.
—John Lennon
Topics: Certainty

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

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
—John Lennon

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

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

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

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

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or my music, then in that respect you can call me that I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.
—John Lennon
Topics: Egotism, Confidence

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

I don’t intend to be a performing flea anymore. 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.
—John Lennon

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: Race, Racism

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

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

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