I still believe that all you need is love.
I'll probably be popped off by some loony. His reply when asked in the 1960's how he expected he would die.
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted.
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry. Royal Variety Performance in London (4 November 1963) attended by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret. John had intended to say "fucking jewelry", but was persuaded against doing so by Paul McCartney and the group's manager Brian Epstein.
Women should be obscene and not heard.
Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.
I don't believe in yesterday, by the way.
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
He's not even the best drummer in The Beatles! When asked whether or not he believed Ringo Starr to be the best drummer in the world.
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. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
Love means having to say you're sorry every fifteen minutes.
Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.
I really thought that love would save us all.
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.
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.
I don't stand back and judge - I do.
If people take any notice of what we say, we say we’ve been through the drug scene, man, and there’s nothing like being straight.
We're trying to sell peace, like a product, you know, and sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks. And it's the only way to get people aware that peace is possible, and it isn't just inevitable to have violence. Not just war — all forms of violence. People just accept it and think 'Oh, they did it, or Harold Wilson [British prime minister at the time] did it, or Nixon did it,' they're always scapegoating people. And it isn't Nixon's fault. We're all responsible for everything that goes on, you know, we're all responsible for Biafra and Hitler and everything. So we're just saying "SELL PEACE" — anybody interested in peace just stick it in the window. It's simple but it lets somebody else know that you want peace too, because you feel alone if you're the only one thinking 'wouldn't it be nice if there was peace and nobody was getting killed.' So advertise yourself that you're for peace if you believe in it.
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. News conference in Chicago, where he apologized for the above statement, which was accepted by the Vatican. (11 August 1966)
That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, 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.
Nothing really affected me until Elvis.
If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'.
Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway. Responding to suggestion that the Beatles should reunite to perform benefit concerts.
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. Interview for KFRC RKO Radio (8 December 1980).
