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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...

-John Lennon

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We All Been Playing

John Lennon

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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...

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I Go To Restaurants And The Groups Always Play "yesterday." I Even Signed A Guy's Violin In Spain After He Played Us "yesterday." He Couldn't Understand That I Didn't Write The Song. But I Guess He Couldn't Have Gone From Table To Table Playing "i Am The Walrus.

I Always Was A Rebel...but On The Other Hand, I Wanted To Be Loved And Accepted...and Not Just Be A Loudmouth, Lunatic, Poet, Musician. But I Cannot Be What I Am Not.

Being Different

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

I Believe That Time Wounds All Heals. (karma)

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.

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.

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.

It Took Me Quite A Long Time To Realise That My Maleness Was Cutting Off Certain Areas For Yoko [ono]. She's A Red Hot Liberationistand Was Quick To Show Me Where I Was Going Wrong, Even Though It Seemed To Me That I Was Just Acting Naturally. That's Why I'm Always Interested To Know How People Who Claim To Be Radical Treat Women.

And So This Is Christmas; And What Have We Done? Another Year Over; A New One Just Begun; And So Happy Christmas; I Hope You Have Fun; The Near And The Dear Ones; The Old And The Young.

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

I'd Like To Incite People To Break The Framework, To Be Disobedient In School, To Stick Their Tongues Out, To Keep Insulting Authority.

I Didn't Really Know That Much About The Maoists, But I Just Knew That They Seemed To Be So Few And Yet They Painted Themselves Green And Stood In Front Of The Police Waiting To Get Picked Off.

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

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

Love Is Real, Real Is Love, Love Is Feeling, Feeling Love, Love Is Wanting To Be Loved. Love Is Touch, Touch Is Love, Love Is Reaching, Reaching Love, Love Is Asking To Be Loved. Love Is You, You And Me, Love Is Knowing, We Can Be. Love Is Free, Free Is Love, Love Is Living, Living Love, Love Is Needing To Be Loved.

In The Two Books I Wrote, Even Though They Were Written In A Sort Of Joycean Gobbledegook, There's Many Knocks At Religion And There Is A Play About A Worker And A Capitalist. I've Been Satirising The System Since My Childhood. I Used To Write Magazines In School And Hand Them Around.

I Don't Mind People Putting Us Down, Because If Everybody Really Liked Us, It Would Be A Bore. You've Got To Have People Putting You Down. It Doesn't Give Any Edge To It If Everybody Just Falls Flat On Their Face Saying, "you're Great." We Enjoy Some Of The Criticisms As Well, They're Quite Funny; Some Of The Clever Criticisms, Not The Ones That Don't Know Anything, But Some Of The Clever Ones Are Quite Fun.

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.

Pools Of Sorrow Waves Of Joy Are Drifting Thorough My Open Mind Possessing And Caressing M

It's Weird Not To Be Weird.

You Say You Want A Revolution? Well, You Know. We All Want To Change The World.

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 Looks Like I'm Going To Be 40 And Life Begins At 40 - So They Promise. And I Believe It, Too.

I Don't Believe In Beatles, I Just Believe In Me.

Produce Your Own Dream. If You Want To Save Peru, Go Save Peru. It’s Quite Possible To Do Anything, But Not If You Put It On The Leaders And The Parking Meters. Don’t Expect Carter Or Reagan Or John Lennon Or Yoko Ono Or Bob Dylan Or Jesus Christ To Come And Do It For You. You Have To Do It Yourself.

Part Of Me Suspects That I'm A Loser, And The Other Part Of Me Thinks I'm God Almighty.

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

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...

Link Wray And Gene Vincent.... Two Of The Greatest Unknowns Of Rock 'n' Roll.

One Thing You Can't Hide - Is When You're Crippled Inside.

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.

Going To America Increased The Build Up On Me, Especially As The War Was Going On There. In A Way We'd Turned Out To Be A Trojan Horse. The 'fab Four' Moved Right To The Top And Then Sang About Drugs And Sex And Then I Got Into More And More Heavy Stuff And That's When They Started Dropping Us.

One Has To Completely Humiliate Oneself To Be What The Beatles Were . . . . It Happened Bit By Bit, Until . . . You're Doing Exactly What You Don't Want To Do With People You Can't Stand -- The People You Hated When You Were Ten.

All Of Us Growing Up Have Come To Terms With Too Much Pain. Although We Repress It, It's Still There. The Worst Pain Is That Of Not Being Wanted, Of Realising Your Parents Do Not Need You In The Way You Need Them.

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.

Limitless Undying Love Which Shines Around Me Like A Million Suns It Calls Me On And On Across The Universe.

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

There's Nothing You Can Do That Can't Be Done.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Your Inside Is Out And Your Outside Is In.

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.

Love Is A Promise; Love Is A Souvenir.

To Begin With, Working Class People Reacted Against Our Openness About Sex. They Are Frightened Of Nudity, They're Repressed In That Way As Well As Others. Perhaps They Thought 'paul [mccartney] Is A Good Lad, He Doesn't Make Trouble'.

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

You'd Have To Give People Free Rein To Attack The Local Councils Or To Destroy The School Authorities, Like The Students Who Break Up The Repression In The Universities. It's Already Happening, Though People Have Got To Get Together More.

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

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.

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

They Hit You At School, They Hate You If Your Clever, And They Despise A Fool.

Women ... I Mean, They Are The Other Half Of The Sky, And Without Them There Is Nothing. And Without Us There's Nothing. There's Only The Two Together Creating Children, Creating Society.

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.

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.

I Started Being Me About The Songs, Not Writing Objectively, But Subjectively. I Think It Was Dylan Who Helped Me Realize That - Not By Any Discussion Or Anything, But By Hearing His Work.

There Is Not One Thing That's Beatle Music. How Can They Talk About It Like That? What Is Beatle Music? Walrus Or Penny Lane? Which? It's Too Diverse: I Want To Hold Your Hand Or Revolution Number Nine?

Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, Misunderstanding All You See. It's Getting Hard To Be Someone But It All Works Out. It Doesn't Matter Much To Me.

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 Think A Lot Of Bad Things Have Happened In The Name Of The Church And In The Name Of Christ. Therefore I Shy Away From Church...

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.

We're Crazy About This City. First Time We Came Here, We Walked The Streets All Day, All Over Town And Nobody Hassled Us. People Smiled, Friendly-like, And We Knew We Could Live Here. We'd Like To Keep Our Place In Greenwich Village And Have An Apartment Here, God And The Immigration Service Willing. Los Angeles? That's Just A Big Parking Lot Where You Buy A Hamburger For The Trip To San Francisco.

I Resent Performing For Frisking Idiots Who Don't Know Anything.

We All Have Hitler In Us, But We Also Have Love And Peace. So Why Not Give Peace A Chance For Once?

There Was Never Any Question About It: We [with Yoko Ono] Had To Have A 50-50 Relationship Or There Was No Relationship, I Was Quick To Learn.

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?

Try To See It My Way, Only Time Will Tell If I Am Right Or I Am Wrong. While You See It Your Way, There's A Chance That We Might Fall Apart Before Too Long. We Can Work It Out. W E Can Work It Out.

A Mistake Is Only An Error, It Becomes A Mistake When You Fail To Correct It

It Was Very Romantic. It's All In The Song, The Ballad Of John And Yoko. If You Want To Know How It Happened, It's In There. Gibraltar Was Like A Little Sunny Dream. I Couldn't Find A White Suit - I Had Sort Of Off-white Corduroy Trousers And A White Jacket. Yoko Had All White On.

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

We Had One Thing In Common - We Were In Love. But Love Is Just A Gift, And It Doesn't Answer Everything And It's Like A Precious Plant That You Have To Nurture And Look After And All That.

People Asking Questions, Lost In Confusion, Well I Tell Them There's No Problem, Only Solutions.

Asking Questions

One Thing I Can Tell You Is You Have To Be Free. Come Together, Right Now, Over Me.

It's Like Being Possessed: Like A Psychic Or A Medium. I Felt Like A Hollow Temple Filled With Many Spirits, Each One Passing Through Me, Each Inhabiting Me For A Little Time And Then Leaving To Be Replaced By Another.

I Can't Speak For George, But I Pretty Damn Well Know We Got Fed Up Of Being Sidemen For Paul.

You Can't Give A Child Too Much Love And If You Love Somebody, You Can't Be With Them Enough. There's No Such Thing.

People Never Grasp The Fact That They're Going To Have To Go Through The Same Thing Again. They Get To The Sort Of Five-year Stretch Or The Seven-year Itch Or Whatever These Tension Points Are That Seem To Be Organic, Built In, Like The Tide Coming In And Going Out. It's Like Every Time The Tide Goes Out You Quit--you Move Your House Or Something.

Music Is Everybody's Possession. It's Only Publishers Who Think That People Own It.

Don't Underestimate The Importance Of Happiness. As Long As You're Happy, Who Cares What You Do?

Life Is Very Short, And There's No Time For Fussing And Fighting My Friends

Trying To Please Everybody Is Impossible - If You Did That, You'd End Up In The Middle With Nobody Liking You. You've Just Got To Make The Decision About What You Think Is Your Best, And Do It.

I Believe Time Wounds All Heels.

There Is Nothing Conceptually Better Than Rock 'n' Roll. No Group, Be It Beatles, Dylan Or Stones, Have Ever Improved On Whole Lot Of Shaking For My Money. Or Maybe I'm Like Our Parents: That's My Period And I Dig It And I'll Never Leave It.

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.

Love Is The Answer. What Was The Question?

When I Was 5 Years Old, My Mother Always Told Me That Happiness Was The Key To Life.

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

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

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.

We Gave Up Everything Just To Sit At Your Table.

It Seems That All Revolutions End Up With A Personality Cult - Even The Chinese Seem To Need A Father-figure.

Love Means Having To Say You're Sorry Every Fifteen Minutes.

Imagine ... Imagine No Religion.

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.

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.

I'd Spent Five Hours That Morning Trying To Write A Song That Was Meaningful And Good, And I Finally Gave Up And Lay Down. Then, "nowhere Man" Came, Words And Music, The Whole Damn Thing, As I Lay Down...song Writing Is About Getting The Demon Out Of Me. It's Like Being Possessed. You Try To Go To Sleep, But The Song Won't Let You. So You Have To Get Up And Make It Into Something, And Then You're Allowed Sleep.

We Went To America A Few Times And [brian] Epstein Always Tried To Waffle On At Us About Saying Nothing About Vietnam. So There Came A Time When George [harrison] And I Said 'listen, When They Ask Next Time, We're Going To Say We Don't Like That War And We Think They Should Get Right Out.' That's What We Did.

Surrealism To Me Is Reality. Psychedelic Vision Is Reality To Me And Always Was.

I Wouldn't Say I Was A Born Writer; I'm A Born Thinker.

I Think The Music Reflects The State That The Society Is In. It Doesn't Suggest The State. I Think The Poets And Musicians And Artists Are Of The Age - Not Only Do They Lead The Age On, But They Also Reflect That Age. [...] Like The Beatles. We Came Out Of Liverpool And We Reflected Our Background And We Reflected Our Thoughts In What We Sang, And That's All People Are Doing.

There Were Very Few Real Folk Singers You Know, Though I Liked Dominic Behan A Bit And There Was Some Good Stuff To Be Heard In Liverpool. Just Occasionally You Hear Very Old Records On The Radio Or Tv Of Real Workers In Ireland Or Somewhere Singing These Songs And The Power Of Them Is Fantastic.

I Don't Believe In Killing Whatever The Reason!

The Greatest Artists Always Come Round To Simplicity.

It's Wierd Not To Be Wierd.

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

You Can Only Breathe Out If You Breathe In.

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

I Began To Realise That We Are All Oppressed Which Is Why I Would Like To Do Something About It, Though I'm Not Sure Where My Place Is.

Keep You Doped With Religion And Sex And Tv

Working Class Hero

If We Took Over Britain, Then We'd Have The Job Of Cleaning Up The Bourgeoisie And Keeping People In A Revolutionary State Of Mind.

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.

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.

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.

[polythene Pam] Was Me, Remembering A Little Event With A Woman In Jersey, And A Man Who Was England's Answer To Allen Ginsberg, Who Gave Us Our First Exposure - This Is So Long - You Can't Deal With All This. You See, Everything Triggers Amazing Memories. I Met Him When We Were On Tour And He Took Me Back To His Apartment And I Had A Girl And He Had One He Wanted Me To Meet. He Said She Dressed Up In Polythene, Which She Did. She Didn't Wear Jackboots And Kilts, I Just Sort Of Elaborated. Perverted Sex In A Polythene Bag. Just Looking For Something To Write About.

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.

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

I Cannot Be What I Am Not.

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.

And So This Is Christmas...what Have You Done?

We Must Always Remember To Thank The Cia And The Army For Lsd. That's What People Forget.... They Invented Lsd To Control People And What They Did Was Give Us Freedom.

I Felt That Film (let It Be) Was Set Up By Paul For Paul. That Is One Of The Main Reasons The Beatles Ended. I Can't Speak For George, But I Pretty Damn Well Know We Got Fed Up Of Being Sidemen For Paul. After Brian Died, That's What Happened, That's What Began To Happen To Us. The Camera Work Was Set Up To Show Paul And Not Anybody Else. And That's How I Felt About It.

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

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.

Yeah We All Shine On, Like The Moon, And The Stars, And The Sun.

I Don't Purchase Records. I Do Enjoy Listening To Things Like Japanese Folk Music Or Indian Music.

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

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 Am Like A Chameleon, Influenced By Whatever's Going On. If Elvis Can Do It, I Can Do It. If The Everly Brothers Can Do It, Me And Paul Can. Same With Dylan.

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.

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

It ( In My Life ) Was The First Song That I Wrote That Was Really, Consciously About My Life.... Up Until Then, It Had Been All Glib And Throwaway.

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

The Kingdom Of Heaven Is Within You.

Christ Consciousness

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

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 Still Believe In Peace, Love And Understanding.

Elvis Died The Day He Went Into The Army.

Everything Is Clearer When You're In Love.

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

Everybody Seems To Think I'm Lazy I Don't Mind, I Think They're Crazy. Running Everywhere At Such A Speed Till They Find There's No Need.

Love Is The Answer, And You Know That For Sure; Love Is A Flower, You've Got To Let It Grow.

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

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

The Pressures Of Being A Parent Are Equal To Any Pressure On Earth. To Be A Conscious Parent, And Really Look To That Little Being's Mental And Physical Health, Is A Responsibility Which Most Of Us, Including Me, Avoid Most Of The Time Because It's Too Hard.

Strawberry Fields Is Anywhere You Want To Go

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.

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'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'm Not Really A Career Person; I'm A Gardener, Basically.

Well, I Don't Want To Be King, I Want To Be Real.

When You Wake Up And Your Heart Is Going Like The Clappers Or Your Back Feels Strained, Or You Develop Some Other Hang-up, You Should Let Your Mind Go To The Pain And The Pain Itself Will Regurgitate The Memory Which Originally Caused You To Suppress It In Your Body. In This Way The Pain Goes To The Right Channel Instead Of Being Repressed Again, As It Is If You Take A Pill Or A Bath, Saying 'well, I'll Get Over It'. Most People Channel Their Pain Into God Or Masturbation Or Some Dream Of Making It.

I Really Had A Chip On My Shoulder, ... And It Still Comes Out Every Now And Then.

I Think It's The Best Thing I've Ever Done. I Think It's Realistic, And It's True To The Me That Has Been Developing Over The Years. I Like First-person Music.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Paranoia Is Just A Heightened Sense Of Awareness

I'm Not Afraid Of Death Because I Don't Believe In It. It's Just Getting Out Of One Car, And Into Another

I Used To Be Cruel To My Woman, And Physically - Any Woman. I Was A Hitter. I Couldn't Express Myself And I Hit. I Fought Men And I Hit Women. That Is Why I Am Always On About Peace, You See. It Is The Most Violent People Who Go For Love And Peace. Everything's The Opposite. But I Sincerely Believe In Love And Peace. I Am A Violent Man Who Has Learned Not To Be Violent And Regrets His Violence. I Will Have To Be A Lot Older Before I Can Face In Public How I Treated Women As A Youngster.

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

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

We're All God. I'm Not A God Or The God, But We're All God And We're All Potentially Divine - And Potentially Evil.

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.

You're Only Awake When You Realise You're Awake And When You're Dreaming, It Is Just As Real, Whatever Happens Is Just As Real - Whether You Actually Do Die In A Dream Or Fulfil Whatever You're Doing In A Dream, It's, There's Nobody To Tell Me It Isn't As Real As This Now, Because How Do You Know?

The More Reality We Face, The More We Realise That Unreality Is The Main Programme Of The Day. The More Real We Become, The More Abuse We Take, So It Does Radicalise Us In A Way, Like Being Put In A Corner. But It Would Be Better If There Were More Of Us.

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.

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.

Well, I Just Want Him To Grow Up Happy. That's The Main Thing.

Happiness Is Inside You, Not With Another Person

Nothing Happened In The Sixties Except That We All Dressed Up.

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.

I've Always Been Politically Minded, You Know, And Against The Status Quo.

Rituals Are Important. Nowadays It's Hip Not To Be Married. I'm Not Interested In Being Hip.

Images Of Broken Light Which Dance Before Me Like A Million Eyes They Call Me On And On Across The Universe Thoughts Meander Like A Restless Wind Inside A Letter Box They Tumble Blindly As They Make Their Way Across The Universe

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.

Nobody Loves You When You're Down And Out.

My Father And Mother Split And I Never Saw My Father Until I Was 20, Nor Did I See Much More Of My Mother.

Art Is Only A Way Of Expressing Pain.

A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be.

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.

Music Touching My Soul, The Spirit Dance Was Unfolding.

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.

You're Born In Pain And Pain Is What We're In Most Of The Time. And I Think That The Bigger The Pain, The More Gods We Need.

Speaking As Somebody Who's Been In The Drug Scene, It's Not Something You Can Go On And On Doing, You Know. It's Like Drink, Or Anything, You've Got To Come To Terms With It. You Know, Like Too Much Food, Or Too Much Anything. You've Got To Get Out Of It. You're Left With Yourself All The Time, Whatever You Do--you Know, Meditation, Drugs Or Anything. But You've Got To Get Down To Your Own God And Your Own Temple In Your Head.

Mahatma Gandhi And Martin Luther King Are Great Examples Of Fantastic Nonviolents Who Died Violently. I Can Never Work That Out. We're Pacifists, But I'm Not Sure What It Means When You're Such A Pacifist That You Get Shot. I Can Never Understand That.

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

I Didn't Leave The Beatles. The Beatles Have Left The Beatles, But No One Wants To Be The One To Say The Party's Over.

Once The New Power Has Taken Over They Have To Establish A New Status Quo Just To Keep The Factories And Trains Running.

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.

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.

The More Real You Get, The More Unreal Everything Else Is.

Don't Need A Gun To Blow Your Mind

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!

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.

I'm A Freakin' Artist, Man, Not A (expletive) Race Horse.

Imagine All The People Living Life In Peace.

It Made Me High. It Really Did.

I Thought I Was Painting In Sound A Picture Of Revolution - But I Made A Mistake, You Know. The Mistake Was That It Was Anti-revolution.

You Either Get Tired Fighting For Peace, Or You Die.

From This Moment On I Know Exactly Where My Life Will Go: Seems That All I Really Was Doing Was Waiting For Love.

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.

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