2. “When you were young, your heart was an open book. You used to say, live and let live.”
3. “You can judge a man’s true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.”
4. “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.”
5. “I still believe that love is all you need. I don’t know a better message than that.”
6. “Think globally, act locally.”
7. “Nothing pleases me more than to go into a room and come out with a piece of music.”
8. “Imagine all the people living life in peace.”
9. “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better. It’s a little better all the time.”
10. “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”
11. “Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you.”
12. “I’m not religious, but I’m very spiritual.”
13. “I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.”
14. “We live in hope of deliverance from the darkness that surrounds us.”
15. “I don’t work at being ordinary.”
Related:
16. “For tomorrow may rain, so I’ll follow the sun.”
17. “All the lonely people. Where do they all belong?”
18. “Be cool and you’ll be alright. That’s rock and roll religion.”
19. “Lyricists play with words.”
20. “The thing is, we’re all really the same person. We’re just four parts of the one.”
21. “I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course.”
22. “Meditation is a lifelong gift. It’s something you can call on at any time.”
23. “I think that, particularly in the old days, the spirit of The Beatles seemed to suggest something very hopeful and youthful.”
24. “I thought the only lonely place was on the moon.”
25. “There are only four people who knew what The Beatles were about anyway.”
26. “Somewhere down the line, everyone must pay for their misdeeds.”
27. “I don’t ever try to make a serious social comment.”
28. “There will be an answer. Let it be.”
29. “Listen to the colour of your dreams.”
30. “Fight for the right to live in freedom!”
31. “I hate the idea of success robbing you of your private life.”
32. “We can work it out. Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.”
33. “Love doesn’t come in a minute, sometimes it doesn’t come at all.”
34. “It’s hard to follow my own act. But the only answer to that would be to give up after The Beatles. I only had two alternatives. Give up or carry on.”
35. “It gets dangerous when you start believing your own legacy. That’s why I’ve not gone back.”
36. “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.”
37. “Sadness isn’t sadness. It’s happiness in a black jacket.”
38. “There’s an urge in us to stop the terrible fleetingness of time. Music. Paintings.”
39. “Criticism didn’t really stop us and it shouldn’t ever stop anyone, because critics are only the people who can’t get a record deal themselves.”
40. “My message is a peaceful one and I hope that the idea will spread.”
41. “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.”
42. “There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”
43. “Music is like a psychiatrist. You can tell your guitar things that you can’t tell people. And it will answer you with things people can’t tell you.”
44. “It’s a powerful thing when you are hearing your friend on a very beautiful song.”
45. “I’m really glad that most of our songs were about love, peace, and understanding.”
46. “It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ I thought, this is it.”
47. “But with writers, there’s nothing wrong with melancholy. It’s an important colour in writing.”
48. “It’s also not unusual for writers to look backward as that’s your pool of resources.”
49. “I like the idea that people hear my stuff, and if it’s commercially successful, that’s a good sign that it’s being heard.”
50. “I’ve got a few guitars that I like. The trouble with fame and riches is that you have more than one guitar.”
51. “I think the pop industry is still a young man’s game.”
52. “Songs have some kind of structure that connects with people’s hearts.”
53. “I’m always trying to do better music. I don’t know if I’ve written my best song yet. That’s the big question. It doesn’t stop you from trying.”
54. “One of my biggest thrills still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.”
55. “There’s nothing as glamorous as a record store to me.”
56. “Take a sad song and make it better.”
57. “Putting two songs together, I’ve always loved that trick when it works.”
58. “And what’s the point of changing when I’m happy as I am?”
59. “If you love your life, everybody will love you too.”
60. “The best thing I ever saw was a man who loved his wife.”
61. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”
62. “I found out that love was more than just holding hands.”
63. “I realised marvelling at nature was a deep pleasure of mine.”
64. “I can’t tell you how much it hurts to lose him. His death is a bitter cruel blow. I really loved the guy.”
65. “The good Lord made this world and everything that’s in it. The way I see it, baby, you got to love it to the limit.”
66. “She loves you and you know that can’t be bad.”
67. “I just always enjoy it; if you really enjoy what you do, you don’t want to stop.”
68. “Live a little, be a gypsy, get around. Get your feet up off the ground, live a little, get around.”
69. “When you get the money, you still need to keep going; you don’t stop. There has to be something else. I think it’s the freedom to do what you want and to live your dreams.”
70. “Life is not easy, but I’ve been very lucky, and I’m touching wood as I say that.”
71. “I never look forward, because I have no idea about how any of it happened to getting here. I’ve no idea how the next five years are going to be.”
72. “Life is an energy field, a bunch of molecules. And these particular molecules formed to make these four guys, who then formed into this band called The Beatles and did all that work.”
73. “It’s like if you’re an astronaut and you’ve been to the moon, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?”
74. “I think people who create and write, it actually does flow—just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It’s simple.”
75. “Look, people are allowed their own opinions and they don’t always coincide with yours. As an artist, you just have to keep plugging on.”
76. “At the end of The Beatles, I really was done in for the first time in my life. Until then, I really was a kind of cocky sod.”
77. “With The Beatles, we’d been very spoiled because we had George Martin who worked for the record label we were going to be signed to. That was very fortunate because we grew together.”
78. “Looking back, I think I was always musical. My dad was very musical, and I think was musical.”
79. “Being in the audience actually looks like quite a lot of fun.”
80. “Microphones are just like people, if you shout at them, they get scared.”
81. “I have not practised how to be a singer without an instrument.”
82. “I think I always had a musicality, and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me.”
83. “What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.”
84. “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they’re here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday.”
85. “You’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs, I look around me and I see it isn’t so.”
86. “Nothing’s gonna change my world.”
87. “You were only waiting for this moment to be free.”
88. “And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me. Shine on ’til tomorrow, let it be.”
89. “And when at last I find you, your song will fill the air.”
90. “The long and winding road that leads to your door will never disappear.”
91. “Please please me, whoa yeah, like I please you.”
92. “Dear Prudence, open up your eyes. Dear Prudence, see the sunny skies.”
93. “Life goes on within you or without you.”
94. “I get by with a little help from my friends.”
95. “Lady Madonna lying on the bed listen to the music playing in your head.”
96. “For you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.”
97. “Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; why, why, says the junk in the yard.”
98. “When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”
99. “I’m the worst on facts about me or facts about The Beatles.”
100. “The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
101. “None of us wanted to be the bass player. In our minds, he was the fat guy who always played at the back.”
102. “I’d like to be able to go on holiday and not to have to hold my belly in for two whole weeks.”
103. “I don’t take me seriously. If we get some giggles, I don’t mind.”
104. “Hamburg totally wrecked us. I remember getting home to England and my dad thought I was half-dead. I looked like a skeleton, I hadn’t noticed the change, I’d been having such a ball!”
105. “We knew it was coming, but we tried to pretend we didn’t know it was coming.”
106. “I have no problem with bootlegs, although every time I say that, my lawyer says, ‘Oh yes you do.'”
107. “Having a beard is natural. When you think about it, shaving it off is quite weird.”
108. “I don’t have any desire to learn. I feel it’s like a voodoo, that it would spoil things if I actually learnt how things are done.”
109. “We got into music to avoid a job, and get lots of girls.”
110. “Why would I retire? Sit at home and watch TV? No thanks. I’d rather be out playing.”
111. “My sold my birth certificate and someone asked why I didn’t buy it back. I don’t know, really. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was mine. It cost me nothing and suddenly I had to buy it back.”
112. “Rock it, man. I know you will.”
113. “You’ve got to believe in yourself, it really is true, because that’s one thing about The Beatles—man, we believed in ourselves. We knew we were good.”
114. “When you’re wide awake, say it for goodness sake, it’s gonna be a great day.”
115. “Out of all those millions and millions of planets floating around there in space, this is our planet, this is our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and take care of it.”
116. “If you can play your stuff in a pub, then you’re a good band.”
117. “If you’re using your imagination, you tend to look into the past for ideas.”
118. “We probably seem to be anti-religious—none of us believe in God.”
119. “We don’t eat anything that has to be killed for us.”
120. “No one is out to break your heart, it only seems that way.”
121. “I feel like I’m running in a figure of eight, don’t know if I’m coming or going, early or late.”
122. “There’s a lot of random in our songs—writing, thinking, letting others think of bits-then bam, you have the jigsaw puzzle.”
123. “A lot of artists use memories. A lot of prose writers, a lot of poets, a lot of songwriters, refer back to something. Generally, it’s all you’ve got, unless you’re brilliant and can write totally in the now.”
124. “You’re up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It’s a fine spring day. We’re riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear blue.”
125. “If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do.”
126. “In some ways, we live in a world where things appear to be very logical, very rational, and mechanical aspects of our world are rather scientific and rather straightforward.”
127. “We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think of what we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part!”
128. “There must be a better way to make the things we want, a way that doesn’t spoil the sky, or the rain or the land.”
129. “If children are studying the 20th century, I’m in their textbooks.”
130. “My dad was a particularly polite kind of guy, very courteous.”
131. “The interesting thing about The Beatles was: the music was one thing, but we kind of symbolised a certain kind of freedom at a time when people of our generation were just growing up and just becoming adults.”
132. “I support decriminalisation. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them into criminals is wrong. It’s when you’re in jail you really become a criminal.”
133. “Transcendental Meditation gives me an island of calm in the midst of so much turbulence.”
134. “As far as art’s concerned, I probably like modern art more than traditional art.”
135. “I can’t manage without homeopathy. In fact, I never go anywhere without homeopathic remedies. I often make use of them.”
136. “I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity—to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the . It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.”
137. “To this day, if I ever meet grownups who play ukulele, I love ’em.”
138. “I meet so many people that just sort of say, ‘I want to thank you for your music. It really helped me’ or ‘It changed my life.’”
139. “I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumours of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.”
140. “We were pretty good mates until The Beatles started to split up and Yoko came into it. It was more like old army buddies splitting up on account of wedding bells.”
141. “I definitely did look up to John. We all looked up to John. He was older and he was very much the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest.”
142. “There’s nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn’t exist before—I won’t compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.”
143. “What’s wrong with sentimental? Sentimental means you like stuff.”
144. “I realise now that taking drugs was like taking an aspirin without having a headache.”
145. “To get a big hit single you’ve got to go a bit dance. You’ve got to go a bit, Britney. I don’t think I can do that—well, I could but it wouldn’t look very seemly!”
146. “I think that selling rights is a bad move commercially, not just morally. It cheapens the songs.”
147. “It’s a powerful thing hearing your friend on a very beautiful song.”
148. “Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, and cruelty.”
149. “Painting is similar to music. You get a couple of words or notes or chords that excite you, and you just follow them and add a bit more and see where it takes you.”
