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.

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on across the universe.

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.

Everything is clearer when you're in love.

I was feeling insecure you might not love me anymore

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.

The more I see, the less I know for sure.

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...

Living is Easy with Eyes Closed.

When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.

How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?

Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.

There are only a few notes. Just variations on a theme.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.

Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives

Nothing is real.

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.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.

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.

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 wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry.

…Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I don't know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peaceYou may say that I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will be as one

War is over ... If you want it.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

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.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

I used to think that the world was doing something to me, that the world owed me something. And that either the conservatives or the socialists or the fascists or the communists or the Christians or the Jews or the fascists were doing something to me. And when you're a teeny-booper, that's what you think. I'm 40 now, I don't think that anymore—because I found out it doesn't fucking work. I am part of them. There's no separation. Were all one. "Give peace a chance," not "Shoot people for peace." "All you need is love." I believe it. It's damn hard, but I absolutely believe it.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace... we just need to declare it.

One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside.

Music is everybody's business. It's only the publishers who think people own it

When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

The more real you get the more unreal the world gets.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

Creativity is a gift. It doesn't come through if the air is cluttered.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

Being honest may not get you a lot of friends it’ll get you the right ones

I was the walrus, but now I am John...and so my friends, you'll just have to carry on. The dream is over.

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.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

I used to think it was mere homesickness, then I started getting it at home.

Whatever gets you through the night

I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

We all shine on...like the moon and the stars and the sun...we all shine on...come on and on and on...

It doesn't matter who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love or how you love, it only matters that you love!

And so this is Christmas...what have you done?

People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?'' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie ``You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, '' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher

You, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

You tell me it's the institution.Well, you know, you'd better free you mind instead.But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow.Don't you know it's gonna be all right?

They keep you doped with religion, and sex, and T.V.And you think you're so clever and classless and freeBut you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

The sun is up, the sky is blueIt's beautiful, and so are you

Well, I don’t want to be king, I want to be real.

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.

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. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing.

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.... Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing.

I am he As you are me And we are all together.

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. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing.

People think the Beatles know what's going on. We don't. We're just doing it.

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you if you'll just rattle your jewelry.

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.