John Lennon

I don't like to be told what to do. I like to do what I want to do.

It's all in the mind, you know.

I'd rather be a rebel than a slave.

I am a part of all that I have met.

It's all happening now. It's not going to happen in the future.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact.

I'm an artist, and I'm a writer, and I'm a musician. And I'm a Beatle. And I'm a human being.

I'm just a human being who has a lot of thoughts and feelings.

I'm just trying to make sense of it all.

I just want to be me.

The world is a funny place. It's full of strange people and strange things.

I'm a very complicated person, you know.

I'm just trying to make some noise.

I'm just trying to have a good time.

It's all a big joke, isn't it?

I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically - any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.

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.

Violence begets violence, you know. And you can't kill off all the violent people or all the murderers. We'd have to kill off the government.

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.

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.