John Lennon Quotes: What He Really Said and Where It Came From

45 John Lennon Quotes, and Which Ones He Really Said

John Lennon's most quotable lines come from two places: the songs he wrote, from "Strawberry Fields Forever" to "Imagine", and the long, unusually candid interviews he gave, above all to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone in December 1970 and to David Sheff of Playboy shortly before his death in 1980. Those words are well documented. Many of the "Lennon quotes" shared online today are not. Of the 45 sayings that circulated under his name on this page for years, at least six can be traced to other people, two are lines from songs Paul McCartney wrote, and several more have no known source at all.

This guide groups the most popular sayings by where they actually come from, explains what Lennon meant where the context is known, and flags the lines that belong to someone else.

Who John Lennon was, in brief

Lennon was born in Liverpool on 9 October 1940. His father was largely absent, and after a turbulent early childhood he grew up with his aunt Mimi at her house, Mendips. A teenage skiffle group, the Quarrymen, evolved into the Beatles in 1960, and over the next decade Lennon and McCartney became the most successful songwriting partnership in pop music. Lennon left the band in September 1969, shortly before it formally broke up.

His solo years were openly political. With Yoko Ono he staged the 1969 "bed-ins" for peace in Amsterdam and Montreal, where "Give Peace a Chance" was recorded, and he returned his MBE in protest at Britain's role in the Nigeria-Biafra war and its support for the US in Vietnam. On 8 December 1980 he was shot outside the Dakota building in New York, where he lived, and died at the age of 40. Because he spoke so often and so frankly, his name became a magnet for any saying about peace, love or nonconformity.

Lines taken from his songs

A good share of the list is simply lyrics, sometimes slightly misquoted. Knowing the song gives each line its proper meaning.

"Imagine" (1971). The dreamer couplet is probably his most-quoted line of all. The song asks listeners to picture a world without borders, religious division or possessions; as Lennon sang it: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
"Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967). Two short entries, the claim that nothing is real and the remark that living is easy with your eyes closed, both come from this song, a dreamlike memory of a Salvation Army children's home near his aunt's house.
"Across the Universe" (1969 release). The image of boundless love shining like a million suns and calling him onward is a lyric from this song, not a separate saying.
"Instant Karma!" (1970). The chorus about all of us shining on, like the moon, the stars and the sun, is this single's refrain.
"God" (1970). The famous opening, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain," comes from this track on his first solo album, where he goes on to list everything he no longer believes in.
"How?" (1971). The question about moving forward without knowing which way you are facing is from this song on Imagine.
"Crippled Inside" (1971). The line about the one thing you cannot hide is the hook of this sardonic, country-flavoured song, also on Imagine.
"Mind Games" (1973). The comparison of love to a flower that must be allowed to grow is a lyric from the title track of this album.
"All You Need Is Love" (1967). The idea that there is nowhere you can be that is not where you are meant to be is one of the verses of this Beatles anthem, written by Lennon.
"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" (1971). The slogan that war is over if you want it began as a 1969 billboard campaign by Lennon and Ono and became the refrain of this Christmas single.

Lines from interviews and public remarks

Lennon gave hundreds of interviews, and several entries on the list are fair paraphrases of things he said in them.

The jewellery joke. At the 1963 Royal Variety Performance, with royalty in the audience, he invited people in the cheaper seats to clap along and the rest to rattle their jewellery. It is one of the best-documented Lennon one-liners and helped define the Beatles' cheeky public image.
Producing your own dream. The long passage about not waiting for leaders, musicians or prophets to save you, and the advice to go and save Peru yourself if that is what you want, is widely cited from his 1980 conversations with David Sheff. Its message, that change is personal responsibility, runs through much of his later thinking.
Screaming when you are drowning. In the 1970 Rolling Stone interview, Lennon defended the raw emotion of his primal-therapy era songs by comparing it to a drowning person, who does not compose a polite request for help but simply screams.
Freak, egomaniac, loser and God. Several entries capture his habit of self-mockery: admitting he had always been considered a freak, accepting the egomaniac label if it meant believing in his own work, and confessing that part of him felt like a loser while another part felt almighty. These lines are reported from his later interviews, though wording varies between versions.
The sixties as a glimpse, love as a plant that needs watering, peace and love as permanent values. These reflect themes Lennon discussed repeatedly in 1980, when he looked back on the decade and on his marriage. Treat the exact phrasing in memes as approximate.
Hiding to make love while violence happens in daylight, and demanding peace instead of a new television. Both fit the language of the 1969 peace campaign, when he and Ono deliberately turned their honeymoon into a media event. Neither has a widely agreed primary source, so they are best described as reported remarks.

Other entries, on God being in all of us rather than an old man in the sky, on death as simply changing cars, on music belonging to everyone rather than to publishers, on the artist's role as a mirror rather than a preacher, and on believing in dragons and fairies until proven otherwise, are often attributed to Lennon in collections but are hard to pin to a specific interview. They are consistent with his views, but they should carry an "attributed" label.

Popular sayings he did not write

These are the lines most likely to embarrass anyone who puts Lennon's name under them:

The schoolboy who wrote "happy" on his assignment. Full Fact found no evidence Lennon ever told this story. Similar anecdotes appear in a 1960 Peanuts strip and in accounts by the actor Goldie Hawn, and the story does not fit his childhood: by five he was living with his aunt rather than his mother.
"Everything will be okay in the end." Quote Investigator traced the earliest known version to O tabuleiro de damas (1988) by the Brazilian writer Fernando Sabino, who credited the saying to his father. Links to Lennon appear only long after his death.
"It matters not who you love…" The likely root is the singer and poet Rod McKuen, who closed his concerts with a simpler version of the idea; the New York Times recorded it in 1971. The longer Lennon-branded version surfaced online in the late 1990s.
"Count your age by friends, not years." These lines come from a greeting-card verse printed in a New York newspaper in 1927, thirteen years before Lennon was born. The writer Dixie Willson is the leading candidate for its author.
"Remember to let her into your heart." This is a lyric from "Hey Jude" (1968), which Paul McCartney wrote to comfort Lennon's young son Julian during his parents' separation.
"I get by with a little help from my friends." This comes from the 1967 song on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a Lennon-McCartney collaboration written for Ringo Starr to sing.

Several more have no traceable source in Lennon's songs or interviews and should be treated as unverified: the passage about fear and love as the two basic motivating forces, the line comparing an unnoticed good deed to a sunrise most people sleep through, the claim that honesty wins you the right friends, the line about everything being clearer when you are in love, the joke about a great woman behind every idiot, and the description of love as a promise and a souvenir. The line about a dream dreamed together becoming reality is usually traced to Yoko Ono, and the remark about seeing more while knowing less circulates without any source.

Why fake Lennon quotes spread so easily

Famous names make words travel. A pleasant saying about love or kindness is far more likely to be shared under a picture of Lennon than under "anonymous", and each share makes the attribution look more established. Lennon is especially vulnerable because his real public voice was warm, idealistic and quotable, so an invented line about peace or happiness sounds plausible.

A few habits help you avoid passing on a fake:

Look for a specific source. A real quote can usually be tied to a song, a book, or an interview with a named journalist and a date.
Check the timeline. If the earliest version is decades older than the person, or appears only after their death, be suspicious.
Notice the voice. Lennon's speech was blunt, funny and often self-deprecating, with Liverpool turns of phrase. Smooth greeting-card phrasing is a warning sign.
Use fact-checkers. Quote Investigator and Full Fact have already traced many popular sayings and explain their findings.

The Lennon worth quoting

The real Lennon is more interesting than the meme version. He could be tender and cruel, idealistic and cynical, sometimes in the same sentence, and he openly changed his mind. If you want to quote him, go to the songs and the major interviews. The lyrics of "Imagine", "God" and "Instant Karma!" and his conversations with Wenner and Sheff say more about him than any list of uplifting one-liners.

Sources: Wikipedia: John Lennon; Full Fact: the "happy" quote; Quote Investigator: Everything will be okay in the end; Quote Investigator: It matters not who you love; Quote Investigator: Count your age by friends; The Beatles: Hey Jude; The Beatles: With a Little Help from My Friends.

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