John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon, MBEwas an English singer and songwriter who co-founded the Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. With fellow member Paul McCartney, he formed a lucrative songwriting partnership...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth9 October 1940
religious pain heart
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.
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.
thinking japan mind
I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it's fantastic. Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind you're left with great precision.
flower yellow white
Yoko [Ono] was showing me some of these Haiku in the original. The difference between them and Long fellow is immense. Instead of a long flowery poem the Haiku would say 'Yellow flower in white bowl on wooden table' which gives you the whole picture.
children giving too-much
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.
children thinking fire
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.
jobs people mind
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.
impact people together
Now The Beatles are four separate people, we don't have the impact we had when we were together.
hate army police
I've always been politically minded and against the status quo. It's pretty basic when you're brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere.
book school writing
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.
feel-better thinking ideas
I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.
army wells
We'd also have to infiltrate the army too, because they are well trained to kill us all.
life forever gone
There are places I'll remember All my life though some have changed Some forever not for better Some have gone and some remain All these places have their moments With lovers and friends I still can recall Some are dead and some are living In my life I've loved them all
gun blow mind
Don't need a gun to blow your mind