Background Image

...

The Second Political Thing I Did Was To Say 'the Beatles Are Bigger Than Jesus.' That Really Broke The Scene, I Nearly Got Shot In America For That. It Was A Big Trauma For All The Kids That Were Following Us.

-John Lennon

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Second Political Thing

John Lennon

...

The Second Political Thing I Did Was To Say 'the Beatles Are Bigger Than Jesus.' That Really Broke The Scene, I Nearly Got Shot In America For That. It Was A Big Trauma For All The Kids That Were Following Us.

Views: 5

Topic

More From John Lennon

Now, In The Sixties We Were Naive, Like Children. Everybody Went Back To Their Rooms And Said 'we Didn't Get A Wonderful World Of Just Flowers And Peace And Happy Chocolate, And It Won't Be Just Pretty And Beautiful All The Time,' And Just Like Babies Everyone Went Back To Their Rooms And Sulked. 'we're Going To Stay In Our Rooms And Play Rock And Roll And Not Do Anything Else, Because The World's A Nasty Horrible Place, Because It Didn't Give Us Everything We Cried For.' Right? Crying For It Wasn't Enough.

I'm Dissatisfied With Every Record The Beatles Ever F***ing Made. There Ain't One Of Them I Wouldn't Remake.

Mother, You Had Me, But I Never Had You.

I Must Say The More Interesting Songs To Me Were The Black Ones Because They Were More Simple.

I Don't Expect You To Understand After You've Caused So Much Pain, But Then Again-you're Not To Blame; You're Just Human-a Victim Of The Insane.

Half Of What I Say Is Meaningless, But I Say It Just To Reach You.

If The Masses Started To Accept Ufos, It Would Profoundly Affect Their Attitude Towards Life, Politics, Everything. It Would Threaten The Status Quo. Whenever People Come To Realize That There Are Larger Considerations Than Their Own Petty Lives, They Are Ripe To Make Radical Changes On A Personal Level, Which Would Eventually Lead To A Political Revolution In Society As A Whole

Political Revolution

What We’ve Got To Do Is Keep Hope Alive. Because Without It We’ll Sink.

Don't Believe That Jazz About There's Nothing You Can Do, "turn On And Drop Out, Man" - Because You've Got To Turn On And Drop In, Or They're Going To Drop All Over You.

I Don't Bother So Much About The Others' Songs. For Instance, I Don't Give A Damn About How 'something' Is Doing In The Charts - I Watch 'come Together' (the Flip Side) Because That's My Song.

I Was The Walrus, But Now I Am John. And So My Friends, You'll Just Have To Carry On. The Dream Is Over.

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.

I'd Always Felt Repressed. We Were All So Pressurised That There Was Hardly Any Chance Of Expressing Ourselves, Especially Working At That Rate, Touring Continually And Always Kept In A Cocoon Of Myths And Dreams.

I've Been Baking Bread And Looking After The Baby...everyone Else Who Has Asked Me That Question Over The Last Few Years Says. 'but What Else Have You Been Doing?' To Which I Say, 'are You Kidding?' Because Bread And Babies, As Every Housewife Knows, Is A Full-time Job. After I Made The Loaves [of Bread,] I Felt Like I Had Conquered Something. But As I Watched The Bread Being Eaten, I Thought, Well, Jesus, Don't I Get A Gold Record Or Knighted Or Nothing?

When Somebody Is Angry With Us, We Draw A Halo Around His Or Her Head, In Our Minds. Does The Person Stop Being Angry Then? Well, We Don't Know! We Know, Though, That When We Draw A Halo Around A Person, Suddenly The Person Starts To Look Like An Angel To Us.

I Don't Have Any Romanticism About Any Part Of My Past. I Think Of It Only Inasmuch As It Gave Me Pleasure Or Helped Me Grow Psychologically. That Is The Only Thing That Interests Me About Yesterday. I Don't Believe In Yesterday, By The Way. You Know I Don't Believe In Yesterday. I Am Only Interested In What I Am Doing Now.

Imagine There's No Heaven... It's Easy If You Try.

I Put Things Down On Sheets Of Paper And Stuff Them In My Pockets. When I Have Enough, I Have A Book.

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.

Instant Karma's Gonna Get You, Gonna Knock You Right On The Head

The Continual Awareness Of What Was Going On Made Me Feel Ashamed I Wasn't Saying Anything. I Burst Out Because I Could No Longer Play That Game Any More, It Was Just Too Much For Me.

If I'd Lived In Roman Times, I'd Have Lived In Rome. Where Else? Today America Is The Roman Empire And New York Is Rome Itself.

If You're An Unknown Artist You're Lucky To Get An Hour In A Studio - It's A Hierarchy And If You Don't Have Hits, You Don't Get Recorded Again.

Ringo Is Ringo, That's All There Is To It. And He's Every Bloody Bit As Warm, Unassuming, Funny And Kind As He Seems. He Was Quite Simply The Heart Of The Beatles

I've Withdrawn Many Times. Part Of Me Is A Monk, And Part A Performing Flea! The Fear In The Music Business Is That You Don't Exist If You're Not At Xenon With Andy Warhol.

We All Been Playing Those Mind Games Forever, Some Kinda Druid Dudes Lifting The Veil, Doing The Mind Guerrilla, Some Call It Magic The Search For The Grail. Love Is The Answer And You Know That For Sure, Love Is A Flower You Got To Let It Grow...

Love Is Like A Flower - You Have To Let It Grow.

I Enjoyed It When Football Crowds In The Early Days Would Sing 'all Together Now' - That Was Another One. I Was Also Pleased When The Movement In America Took Up 'give Peace A Chance' Because I Had Written It With That In Mind Really.

The Second Political Thing I Did Was To Say 'the Beatles Are Bigger Than Jesus.' That Really Broke The Scene, I Nearly Got Shot In America For That. It Was A Big Trauma For All The Kids That Were Following Us.

I've Never Really Been Wanted.

Slipping? We're Bigger Than Jesus.

There Is No Problem Only Solutions

When You're In Love, When Somebody Says Something Like, "how Can You Be With That Woman?" You Say, "what Do You Mean? I Am With This Goddess Of Love, The Fulfillment Of My Whole Life. Why Are You Saying This? Why Do You Want To Throw A Rock At Her Or Punish Me For Being In Love With Her?

I Was Feeling Insecure You Might Not Love Me Anymore

Imagine There's No Varmints. It Isn't Hard To Do.

Love, Love, Love. All You Need Is Love. Love Is All You Need.

When We Got Married, We Knew Our Honeymoon Was Going To Be Public, Anyway, So We Decided To Use It To Make A Statement. We Sat In Bed And Talked To Reporters For Seven Days. It Was Hilarious. In Effect, We Were Doing A Commercial For Peace On The Front Page Of The Papers Instead Of A Commercial For War.

News Conference In Chicago, Where He Apologized For The Above Statement, Which Was Accepted By The Vatican. (11 August 1966)

Nobody Loves You When You're Down And Out.

We Need To Love Ourselves First In All Our Glory And Imperfections

People Are Just Up Tight Because The Kids Are Having Fun And They Didn't Have The Same Freedom.

You Won't Get Anything Unless You Have The Vision To Imagine It.

We're More Popular Than Jesus Now; I Don't Know Which Will Go First, Rock 'n' Roll Or Christianity.

Mostly Folk Music Is People With Fruity Voices Trying To Keep Alive Something Old And Dead. It's All A Bit Boring, Like Ballet: A Minority Thing Kept Going By A Minority Group.

And, Because My Role In Society - Or Any Artist Or Poet's Role - Is To Try To 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. And It's Like That's The Job Of The Artist In Society, Not To...they're Not Some Alienated Being Living On The Outskirts Of Town. It's Fine To Live On The Outskirts Of Town, But Artists Must Reflect What We All Are. … If That's Taken It Too Much On Meself, I Feel That Artists Are That - They're Reflections Of Society... Mirrors.

Being Honest May Not Get You A Lot Of Friends But It’ll Always Get You The Right Ones

The Main Hangup In The World Today Is Hypocrisy And Insecurity. If People Can't Face Up To The Fact Of Other People Being Naked Or Smoking Pot, Or Whatever They Want To Do, Then We're Never Going To Get Anywhere. People Have Got To Become Aware That It's None Of Their Business And That Being Nude Is Not Obscene. Being Ourselves Is What's Important. If Everyone Practiced Being Themselves Instead Of Pretending To Be What They Aren't, There Would Be Peace.

I Hope Someday You Will Join Us And The World Will Live As One.

Sitting On A Cornflake, Waiting For The Van To Come...

I Believe In What I Do, And I'll Say It.

Nothing Is Real.

I Am Not The Beatles. I'm Me. Paul Isn't The Beatles...the Beatles Are The Beatles. Separately, They Are Separate.

Man, You Should Have Seen Them Kicking Edgar Allan Poe.

From Our Earliest Days In Liverpool, George And I On The One Hand And Paul On The Other Had Different Musical Tastes. Paul Preferred 'pop Type' Music And We Preferred What Is Now Called 'underground'. This May Have Led To Arguments, Particularly Between Paul And George, But The Contrast In Tastes, I'm Sure, Did More Good Than Harm, Musically Speaking, And Contributed To Our Success.

I Can't Play Guitar, But I Can Sure Make It Howl.

I Don't Know If I Want To Record Together Again. I Go Off And On It... In The Old Days, When We Needed An Album, Paul And I Got Together And Produced Enough Songs For It. Nowadays, There's Three Of Us Writing Prolifically And Trying To Fit It All Into One Album.

There's Nothing You Can Know That Isn't Known.

I Always Read The Papers, The Political Bits.

Everything Is Clearer When You're In Love.

But For Me At Any Rate It Was All Part Of Dissolving The God Trip Or Father-figure Trip. Facing Up To Reality Instead Of Always Looking For Some Kind Of Heaven.

It Was My Fat Elvis Period. I Was Eating And Drinking Like A Pig. I Was Depressed And I Was Crying Out For Help. It's Real. And I Meant It.

The Idea Of Beetles Came Into My Head. I Decided To Spell It Beatles To Make It Look Like Beat Music, Just A Joke.

Of Course It's Difficult To Know What The Workers Are Really Thinking Because The Capitalist Press Always Only Quotes Mouthpieces Like Vic Feather Anyway.

At Shea Stadium, I Saw The Top Of The Mountain.

In Western-style Communism We Would Have To Create An Almost Imaginary Workers' Image Of Themselves As The Father-figure.

Please Don't Wake Me, No, Don't Shake Me, Leave Me Where I Am, I'm Only Sleeping.

The Thing Is, In America, It Just Seemed Ridiculous - I Mean, The Idea Of Having A Hit Record Over There, ... It Was Just Something You Could Never Do.

In England, There Are Only Two Things To Be, Basically: You Are Either For The Labor Movement Or For The Capitalist Movement. Either You Become A Right-wing Archie Bunker If You Are In The Class I Am In, Or You Become An Instinctive Socialist, Which I Was.

Imagine No Possessions; I Wonder If You Can.

Some People Say It's A When You Get Older Fans The Kids Don't Like You. It's True.

There's Nothing You Can Do That Can't Be Done Nothing You Can Sing That Can't Be Sung. Nothing You Can Say But You Can Learn How To Play The Game. It's Easy. Nothing You Can Make That Can't Be Made. No One You Can Save That Can't Be Saved. Nothing You Can Do But You Can Learn How To Be You In Time. It's Easy. Nothing You Can Know That Isn't Known. Nothing You Can See That Isn't Shown. Nowhere You Can Be That Isn't Where You're Meant To Be. It's Easy.

I Like Rock & Roll, And I Don't Like Much Else.

I'll Probably Be Popped Off By Some Loony.

Inspirational Life

Without Jimmy (james) Dean The Beatles Would Never Have Existed.

We're Crazy About This City. Los Angeles? That's Just A Big Parking Lot Where You Buy A Hamburger For The Trip To San Francisco.

You Don't Need Anybody To Tell You Who You Are Or What You Are. You Are What You Are!

That's What The Great Masters And Mistresses Have Been Saying Ever Since Time Began. They Can Point The Way, Leave Signposts And Little Instructions In Various Books That Are Now Called Holy And Worshipped For The Cover Of The Book And Not For What It Says, But The Instructions Are All There For All To See, Have Always Been And Always Will Be.

Count Your Age By Friends, Not Years. Count Your Life By Smiles, Not Tears.

Love Is A Promise; Love Is A Souvenir.

Declare It. Just The Same Way We Declare War. That Is How We Will Have Peace... We Just Need To Declare It.

I Am Going Into An Unknown Future, But I'm Still All Here, And Still While There's Life, There's Hope.

Don't You Think That The Beatles Gave Every Sodden Thing They've Got To Be The Beatles? That Took A Whole Section Of Our Youth - That Whole Period - When Everybody Else Was Just Goofin' Off We Were Workin' 24 Hours A Day!

Nor Do I Think We Came From Monkeys, By The Waythat's Another Piece Of Garbage. What The Hell's It Based On? We Couldn't've Come From Anything-fish, Maybe, But Not Monkeys. I Don't Believe In The Evolution Of Fish To Monkeys To Men. Why Aren't Monkeys Changing Into Men Now? It's Absolute Garbage. It's Absolutely Irrational Garbage, As Mad As The Ones Who Believe The World Was Made Only Four Thousand Years Ago, The Fundamentalists.

People Always Got The Image I Was An Anti-christ Or Antireligion. I'm Not. I'm A Most Religious Fellow. I Was Brought Up A Christian And I Only Now Understand Some Of The Things That Christ Was Saying In Those Parables. Because People Got Hooked On The Teacher And Missed The Message. All This Bit About Electing A President. We Pick Our Own Daddy Out Of A Dog Pound Of Daddies.

If There Hadn't Been An Elvis, There Wouldn't Have Been The Beatles.

For A Long Time I Wasn't Listening To Music, To The Rock And Roll Stuff On The Radio, Because It Would Cause Me To Get Sweaty. It Would Bring Back Memories I Didn't Want To Know About, Or I Would Get That Feeling That I'm Not Alive 'cause I'm Not Making It. And If It Was Good, I Hated It 'cause I Wasn't Doing It. And If It Was Bad, I Was Furious 'cause I Could've Done It Better.

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

Music Is Everybody's Possession. It's Only Publishers Who Think That People Own It. If You Were Going To Give Rock 'n' Roll Another Name You Might As Well Call It Chuck Berry. We're More Popular Than Jesus Now; I Don't Know Which Will Go First - Rock And Roll Or Christianity.

Paul (mccartney) And I Made A Deal When We Were 15. There Was Never A Legal Deal Between Us, Just A Deal We Made When We Decided To Write Together That We Put Both Our Names On It, No Matter What.

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

Love Of My Life

The Trouble With Government As It Is, Is That It Doesn't Represent The People. It Controls Them.

If [sean] Doesn't See Me A Few Days Or If I'm Really, Really Busy, And I Just Sort Of Get A Glimpse Of Him, Or If I'm Feeling Depressed Without Him Even Seeing Me, He Sort Of Picks Up On It. And He Starts Getting That Way. So I Can No Longer Afford To Have Artistic Depressions. If I Start Wallowing In A Depression, He'll Start Coming Down With Stuff, So I'm Sort Of Obligated To Keep Up. And Sometimes I Can't, Because Something Will Make Me Depressed And Sure As Hell He'll Get A Cold Or Trap His Finger In A Door Or Something, And So Now I Have Sort Of More Reason To Stay Healthy Or Bright.

There Are Only A Few Notes. Just Variations On A Theme.

I Am A Violent Man Who Has Learned Not To Be Violent And Regrets His Violence.

I Never Listen To The Radio. If It's Bad, I Make Fun Of It, And If It's Good, I Get Jealous That I Didn't Think Of It.

The More I See The Less I Know For Sure.

Why Don't People Believe Us When We Say We're Simply In Love?

When Real Music Comes To Me - The Music Of The Spheres, The Music That Surpasses Understanding - That Has Nothing To Do With Me, Cause I'm Just The Channel. The Only Joy For Me Is For It To Be Given To Me, And To Transcribe It Like A Medium... Those Moments Are What I Live For.

I'm Not Going To Change The Way I Look Or The Way I Feel To Conform To Anything.

I'm Not A God Or The God, But We're All God And We're All Potentially Divine - And Potentially Evil. We All Have Everything Within Us And The Kingdom Of Heaven Is Nigh And Within Us, And If You Look Hard Enough You'll See It.

Peace In Your Mind, Peace On Earth, Peace At Work, Peace At Home, Peace In The World.

Songwriting Is Like ... Being Possessed. You Try To Go To Sleep But The Song Won't Let You.

There Are No Problems, Only Solutions.

I Always Like The Studio Best, Once I Got The Hang Of It And The Control. I Like It Because It's Complete Control

We Want To Go Forward, But Which Way Are We Facing?

The First Thing We Did Was To Proclaim Our Liverpoolness To The World, And Say 'it's All Right To Come From Liverpool And Talk Like This'. Before, Anybody From Liverpool Who Made It, Like Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Arthur Askey, Had To Lose Their Accent To Get On The Bbc.

If Art Were To Redeem Man, It Could Do So Only By Saving Him From The Seriousness Of Life And Restoring Him To An Unexpected Boyishness.

We Put A President Up There, And Then We Set Fire To Him Because He's Not Solving All Our Problems.

That Radicalism (of The '70s) Was Phony, Really, Because It Was Out Of Guilt. I'd Always Felt Guilty That I Made Money, So I Had To Give It Away Or Lose It. I Don't Mean I Was A Hypocrite. When I Believe, I Believe Right Down To The Roots.

All I Want Is The Truth, Just Give Me Some Truth

There Was Something Wrong With Me, I Thought, Because I Seemed To See Things Other People Didn't See.

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.

I Regret Profoundly That I Was Not An American And Not Born In Greenwich Village. It Might Be Dying, And There Might Be A Lot Of Dirt In The Air You Breathe, But This Is Where It's Happening.

It Came In A Vision - A Man Appeared On A Flaming Pie And Said Unto Them, 'from This Day Forward You Are Beatles With An A.' Thank You Mister Man, They Said, Thanking Him.

My Original Idea For The Cover Was Better - Decapitate Paul - But He Wouldn't Go Along With It.

We Never Write Anything With Themes. We Just Write The Same Rubbish All The Time.

I Was A Working-class Macho Guy Who Was Used To Being Served And Yoko Didn't Buy That. From The Day I Met Her, She Demanded Equal Time, Equal Space, Equal Rights.

I Just Like Tv. I Think To Me, It Replaced The Fireplace When I Was A Child. They Took The Fire Away And They Put A Tv In Instead And I Got Hooked On It.

Laurel And Hardy. That's John And Yoko, And We Stand A Better Chance Under That Guise, Because All The Serious People, Like Martin Luther King, And Kennedy, And Gandhi, Got Shot.

You're Jeans Are Full Of Crap. You're Full Of Beans, You're In You Teens. You've Lost Your Mama's Road Map.

What Does It Mean When A Person Is Such A Pacifist That They Get Shot? I Can Never Understand That.

My Life With The Beatles Had Become A Trap... I Always Remember To Thank Jesus For The End Of My Touring Days; If I Hadn't Said That The Beatles Were 'bigger Than Jesus' And Upset The Very Christian Ku Klux Klan, Well, Lord, I Might Still Be Up There With All The Other Performing Fleas! God Bless America. Thank You, Jesus.

All This Bit About Angels And All The Different Religions, It's Based On Something. I Think Anything's Possible. I Believe In Everything Until It's Disproved.

Imagine There's No Countries It Isn't Hard To Do Nothing To Kill Or Die For And No Religion Too Imagine All The People Living Life In Peace.

I Still Don't Know How To Express The Really Delicate Personal Stuff. People Think That Plastic Ono Is Very Personal, But There Are Some Subtleties Of Emotions Which I Cannot Seem To Express In Pop Music, And It Frustrates Me. Maybe That's Why I Still Search For Other Ways Of Expressing Myself. Song Writing Is A Limiting Experience In Some Ways - Writing Down Words That Have To Rhyme.

It's Just Natural, It's Not A Great Disaster. People Keep Talking About It Like It's The End Of The Earth. It's Only A Rock Group That Split Up, It's Nothing Important. You Know, You Have All The Old Records There If You Want To Reminisce.

I Was Stuck In The Feeling That One Did Not--was Not Justified In Being Alive Unless One Was Fulfilling Other People's Dreams, Whether They Were Contractual Dreams Or The Public's Dreams, Or Fulfilling My Own Dreams And Illusions About What I Thought I Was Supposed To Be, Which, In Retrospect, Turned Out To Not Be What I Am.

I Had To Really Kill Off All The Religious Myths. In The Therapy You Really Feel Every Painful Moment Of Your Life - It's Excruciating, You Are Forced To Realise That Your Pain, The Kind That Makes You Wake Up Afraid With Your Heart Pounding, Is Really Yours And Not The Result Of Somebody Up In The Sky. It's The Result Of Your Parents And Your Environment.

All The Revolutions Have Happened When A Fidel Or Marx Or Lenin Or Whatever, Who Were Intellectuals, Were Able To Get Through To The Workers. They Got A Good Pocket Of People Together And The Workers Seemed To Understand That They Were In A Repressed State.

As A Child I Did A Lot Of Imaginary Bits, You Know. It Depends On The Individual, I Enjoyed Then Knocking The Nail In, I Enjoy Knocking Nails In Walls To Hang Pictures Up, But I Also Enjoy Thinking 'i'm Gonna Do That' But I Actually Won't Do It, I Enjoy Imagining Doing Things Just As Much.

The Beatles Is Over, But John, Paul, George, And Ringo...god Knows What Relationship They'll Have In The Future. I Don't Know. I Still Love Those Guys! Because They'll Always Be Those People Who Were That Part Of My Life.

God Is A Concept By Which We Measure Our Pain. I'll Say It Again. God Is A Concept By Which We Measure Our Pain.

I Found I Was Having Continually To Please The Sort Of People I'd Always Hated When I Was A Child. This Began To Bring Me Back To Reality.

It's Better To Fade Away Like An Old Soldier Than To Burn Out. I Don't Appreciate Worship Of Dead Sid Vicious Or Of Dead James Dean Or Of Dead John Wayne. It's The Same Thing. Making Sid Vicious A Hero, Jim Morrison - It's Garbage To Me. I Worship The People Who Survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.

The Beatles Had Gone Beyond Comprehension. We Were Smoking Marijuana For Breakfast. We Were Well Into Marijuana And Nobody Could Communicate With Us, Because We Were Just Glazed Eyes, Giggling All The Time.

There's High, And Then There's High, And To Get Really High--i Mean So High That You Can Walk On The Water, That High--that's Where I'm Goin'

So Long Ago, Was It In A Dream, Was It Just A Dream?

In Hamburg The Waiters Always Had Preludin - And Various Other Pills, But I Remember Preludin Because It Was Such A Big Trip - And They Were All Taking These Pills To Keep Themselves Awake, To Work These Incredible Hours In This All-night Place. And So The Waiters, When They'd See The Musicians Falling Over With Tiredness Or With Drink, They'd Give You The Pill. You'd Take The Pill, You'd Be Talking, You'd Sober Up, You Could Work Almost Endlessly - Until The Pill Wore Off, Then You'd Have To Have Another.

When His Rolls Royce Was Mobbed By Fans The Chauffeur Said: ''do You Want Me To Get Them Off The Car?'' And Lennon Replied: ''no - They Paid For It, They Can Wreck It

I'm Really Very Embarrassed About My Guitar Playing, In One Way, Because It's Very Poor. I Can Never Move But I Can Make A Guitar Speak.

The Beatles Were Just A Band That Made It Very, Very Big, That's All.

As In A Love Affair, Two Creative People Can Destroy Themselves Trying To Recapture That Youthful Spirit, At Twenty-one Or Twenty-four, Of Creating Without Even Being Aware Of How It's Happening

There's Nothing New Under The Sun. All The Roads Lead To Rome. And People Cannot Provide It For You. I Can't Wake You Up. You Can Wake You Up. I Can't Cure You. You Can Cure You.

There's Nothing You Can Do That Can't Be Done, Nothing You Can Sing That Can't Be Sung, Nothing You Can Say But You Can Learn How To Play The Game, It's Easy... All You Need Is Love.

As Someone From The Working Class I Was Always Interested In Russia And China And Everything That Related To The Working Class, Even Though I Was Playing The Capitalist Game.

As Usual, There Is A Great Woman Behind Every Idiot.

The Whole Beatle Thing Was Just Beyond Comprehension. When 'help' Came Out, I Was Actually Crying Out For Help. Most People Think It's Just A Fast Rock 'n Roll Song. I Didn't Realize It At The Time; I Just Wrote The Song Because I Was Commissioned To Write It For The Movie. But Later, I Knew I Really Was Crying Out For Help.

I'd Never Met A Woman I Considered As Intelligent As Me. That Sounds Bigheaded, But Every Woman I Met Was Either A Dolly-chick, Or A Sort Of Screwed-up Intellectual Chick. And Of Course, In The Field I Was In, I Didn't Meet Many Intellectual People Anyway. I Always Had This Dream Of Meeting An Artist, An Artist Girl Who Would Be Like Me. And I Thought It Was A Myth, But Then I Met Yoko And That Was It.

I Thought Of Nothing Else But Rock 'n' Roll; Apart From Sex And Food And Money--but That's All The Same Thing, Really.

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 Wasn't Knocking It Or Putting It Down. I Was Just Saying It As A Fact And It's True More For England Than Here. I'm Not Saying That We're Better Or Greater, Or Comparing Us With Jesus Christ As A Person Or God As A Thing Or Whatever It Is. I Just Said What I Said And It Was Wrong. Or It Was Taken Wrong. And Now It's All This.

I Felt An Obligation Even Then To Write A Song That People Would Sing In The Pub Or On A Demonstration. That Is Why I Would Like To Compose Songs For The Revolution.

I Just Sat All Night Looking At Him, Saying, 'wow, It's Incredible.' When Yoko Woke Up, I Told Her, 'he's Fine,' And We Cried.

Most Of The Songs Came From Europe And Africa And Now They Were Coming Back To Us. Many Of [bob] Dylan's Best Songs Came From Scotland, Ireland Or England. It Was A Sort Of Cultural Exchange.

The World Went Mad And Used Us As An Excuse.

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.

Only By Trying On Other People's Clothes Do We Find What Size We Are.

Paul And I Know Each Other On A Lot Of Different Levels That Very Few People Know About.

I'm An Elvis Fan Because It Was Elvis Who Really Got Me Out Of Liverpool.

Newspaper People Have A Habit Of Putting You In The Front Pages To Sell Their Papers, And Then After They've Sold Their Papers And Got Big Circulations, They Say, 'look At What We've Done For You

I Could Still Be Forgotten When I'm Dead. I Don't Really Care What Happens When I'm Dead.

We Thought Being Offered The M.b.e. [member Of The Order Of The British Empire] Was As Funny As Everybody Else Thought It Was. Why? What For? We Didn't Believe It. It Was A Part We Didn't Want. We All Met And Agreed It Was Daft.

Nothing Affected Me Until I Heard Elvis. Without Elvis There Would Be No Beatles.

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.

One Day At A Time Is All We Do. One Day At A Time Is Good For You

One Day At A Time

You Can Go To Church And Sing A Hymn, Judge Me By The Colour Of My Skin, You Can Live A Lie Until You Die, One Thing You Can't Hide Is When You're Crippled Inside.

It's Fear Of The Unknown. The Unknown Is What It Is. And To Be Frightened Of It Is What Sends Everybody Scurrying Around Chasing Dreams, Illusions, Wars, Peace, Love, Hate, All That-it's All Illusion. Unknown Is What It Is. Accept That It's Unknown And It's Plain Sailing. Everything Is Unknown-then You're Ahead Of The Game. That's What It Is. Right?

It Seems To Me That The Students Are Now Half-awake Enough To Try And Wake Up Their Brother Workers. If You Don't Pass On Your Own Awareness Then It Closes Down Again.

Work Is Life, You Know, And Without It, There's Nothing But Fear And Insecurity.

When I Started, Rock And Roll Itself Was The Basic Revolution To People Of My Age And Situation. We Needed Something Loud And Clear To Break Through All The Unfeeling And Repression That Had Been Coming Down On Us Kids.

I Don't Miss It. I'm Glad It Happened, But I Don't Miss It.

I Believe Jesus Was Right, Buddha Was Right, And All Of Those People Like That Are Right. They're All Saying The Same Thing - And I Believe It. I Believe What Jesus Actually Said - The Basic Things He Laid Down About Love And Goodness - And Not What People Say He Said.

"i've Always Thought There Was This Underlying Thing In Paul's "get Back." When We Were In The Studio Recording It, Every Time He Sang The Line "get Back To Where You Once Belonged," He'd Look At Yoko."

Father, You Left Me, But I Never Left You.

There Are A Lot Of People Walking Around With Long Hair Now And Some Trendy Middle Class Kids In Pretty Clothes. But Nothing Changed Except That We All Dressed Up A Bit, Leaving The Same Bastards Running Everything.

We Reckoned We Could Make It Because There Were Four Of Us. None At Us Would've Made It Alone, Because Paul Wasn't Quite Strong Enough, I Didn't Have Enough Girl-appeal, George Was Too Quiet, And Ringo Was The Drummer. But We Thought That Everyone Would Be Able To Dig At Least One Of Us, And That's How It Turned Out.

I Want To Be With My Best Friend. My Best Friend, My Wife. Who Could Ask For Anything More?

I Didn't Come After Elvis And Dylan, I've Been Around Always. But If I See Or Meet A Great Artist, I Love 'em.

Imagine No Possesions, I Wonder If You Can, No Need For Greed Or Hunger, A Brotherhood Of Man. Imagine All The People Sharing All The World.

Brotherhood Of Man

What I'd Have Liked Would Have Been The Money And The Hit Records Without The Fame.

I Stopped Listening To Dylan With Both Ears After Highway 64 (sic) And Blonde On Blonde, And Even Then It Was Because George (harrison) Would Sit Me Down And Make Me Listen.

I've Never Voted. I've Never Voted Yet Although I Could Have Voted For The Last Ten Years.

Reporter Lady: What's That Color? John: Hm. I'd Call This A Color!

You Know The Way People Begin To Look Like Their Dogs? Well, We're Beginning To Look Like Each Other.

The Kingdom Of Heaven Is Within You.

Christ Consciousness

Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.

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.

Control Yourself. You'll Spurt.

I Don't Believe In Magic ... I Don't Believe In Jesus ... I Don't Believe In Buddha ... I Don't Believe In Elvis ... I Don't Believe In Beatles.

In My Case I've Never Not Been Political, Though Religion Tended To Overshadow It In My Acid Days.

Will The People In The Cheaper Seats Clap Your Hands? And The Rest Of You, If You'll Just Rattle Your Jewelry.

Life Doesn't Imitate Art...it Is Art!

It's Wierd Not To Be Wierd.

Look, I Wasn't Saying The Beatles Are Better Than God Or Jesus. I Said 'beatles' Because It's Easy For Me To Talk About Beatles. I Could Have Said Tv Or The Cinema, Motor Cars Or Anything Popular And I Would Have Gotten Away With It.

No Short-haired, Yellow-bellied, Son Of Tricky Dicky Is Gonna Mother Hubbard Soft Soap Me With Just A Pocketful Of Soap.

New York Is What Paris Was In The Twenties. . . The Center Of The Art World. And We Want To Be In The Center. It's The Greatest Place On Earth. . . I've Got A Lot Of Friends Here And I Even Brought My Own Cash.

We Were Really Professional By The Time We Got To The States; We Had Learned The Whole Game. When We Arrived Here We Knew How To Handle The Press; The British Press Were The Toughest In The World And We Could Handle Anything. We Were All Right.

All We Are Saying Is Give Peace A Chance.

The Whole Thing Died In My Mind Long Before The Rumpus Started. We Used To Believe The Beatles Myth Just As Much As The Public And We Were In Love With Them Just The Same Way. But We Were Four Individuals Who Eventually Recovered Our Individualities After Being Submerged In A Myth.

If Everyone Could Just Be Happy With Themselves And The Choices People Around Them Make, The World Would Instantly Be A Better Place!

The Only Reason I Am A Star Is Because Of My Repression. Nothing Else Would Have Driven Me Through All That If I Was 'normal'.

Being Different

Trending Author

Anthony Jeselnik

Category