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"I've always been politically
minded, you know, and against the status quo."
"I've never voted. I've never voted yet although I
could have voted for the last ten years."
"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."
"Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick
and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
"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."
"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 think a lot of bad things have happened in the name
of the church and in the name of Christ and therefore I shy
away from church."
"We're all God. I'm not a god or the God,
but we're all God and we're all potentially divine-and potentially
evil."
"Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands?
And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry."
John Lennon at the Royal Variety Performance (November 4,
1963)
"You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever
you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in
your own temple."
"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the
MBE received theirs for heroism in the war --for killing
people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd
say we deserve ours more."
"We're not disinterested in politics. It's just that politicians
are disinteresting."
"People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or antireligion.
I'm not. I'm a most religious fellow. I was brought up a
Christian and I only now understand some of the things that
Christ was saying in those parables. Because people got hooked
on the teacher and missed the message. All this bit about
electing a President. We pick our own daddy out of a dog
pound of daddies."
"The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't
represent the people. It controls them."
“I was trying to say something about Christianity,
the idea that you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I
didn’t believe that.”
About the lyric from "Girl"; “Was
she told when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure?”
“The lyrics stand today (1980). They’re still
my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want
to know what you’re going to do after you’ve
knocked it all down. I mean, can’t we use some of it?
What’s the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want
to change the system, change the system. It’s no good
shooting people.”
About his 1968 song, "Revolution"
"You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever
you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in
your own temple. It's all down to you, mate."
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