John Lennon is one of the most quoted people of the twentieth century, and also one of the most misquoted.
Some of the lines below were shouted at reporters from a hotel bed in Amsterdam. Some were painted on billboards in eleven cities. And three of them he never said at all — they were written by other people, in one case twenty-eight years before he was born, and got attached to his name somewhere along the way.
These quotes inspired me to create a series of posters. At the time, I believed John Lennon had said all of them. It's only now, after looking into their origins properly, that I know which ones are genuine. I've sorted them here by how well documented they are: those we can date and place first, the unsourced ones next, and the quotes that definitely aren't his at the end.
Part one: what he actually said
"Hair Peace. Bed Peace."
In March 1969, John and Yoko married in Gibraltar and went to Amsterdam for their honeymoon. The press assembled outside the Hilton expecting to catch the newlyweds in bed. What they got instead was a week-long press conference: the couple sat up in pyjamas from ten in the morning until ten at night, talking to anyone who came in, with two hand-lettered signs taped to the window behind them reading Hair Peace and Bed Peace.
It was a deliberate hijack. Lennon understood the reporters were coming anyway, so he gave them a headline they had to print. The room was 902.
"War is over (if you want it)"
In December 1969, John and Yoko bought billboard space in eleven cities — New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Athens, Amsterdam, Toronto, Montreal and Los Angeles — carrying those words in plain black type on white, with "Happy Christmas from John & Yoko" underneath in small letters.
No image, no logo, no band name. Lennon had worked out that the advertising industry's tools were available to anyone who could pay for the space. The song came two years later.
"We're offering an alternative to
During the Bed-Ins, journalists kept asking whether two people in pyjamas could really stop a war. Lennon's answer was that they weren't claiming to — they were putting a different image into circulation, competing for attention with the footage coming out of Vietnam every night.
"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be
Lennon's argument that peace was a consumer choice as much as a political one. He talked repeatedly during this period about selling peace the way you'd sell soap — same billboards, same repetition, same jingles — because that was the machinery that actually shifted public opinion.
Peace Instead of Another Television Set print →
"You're all geniuses and you're all beautiful"
The full line continues: you don't need anyone to tell you who you are. It belongs to the same 1969–70 period as the peace campaign, when Lennon was consistently arguing that leaders, gurus and institutions — his own band included — were things people should stop deferring to.
Coming from one of the four most idolised men alive, it was an unusual thing to say.
Part two: documented, but not his words
"Remember love"
The B-side of Give Peace a Chance, released July 1969 — a quiet Yoko Ono song credited to the Plastic Ono Band, released under the loudest peace slogan of the year. The pairing was deliberate: the anthem on one side, the private instruction on the other.
"This is not here"
The title of Yoko Ono's 1971 retrospective at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York — an exhibition John helped organise, and which drew crowds far beyond anything the museum had handled before. The phrase is pure Fluxus: a sign that denies the thing it's attached to.
Part three: attributed to him, source unknown
These five are quoted everywhere with Lennon's name on them, and none of them come with a citation. That doesn't make them fake — he gave hundreds of interviews, many of them untranscribed — but nobody has yet produced the source.
"Don't hate what you don't understand"
Don't Hate What You Don't Understand print →
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination"
Reality Leaves a Lot to the Imagination print →
"Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it'll always get you the right ones"
"It's weird not to be weird"
It's Weird Not to Be Weird print →
"Behind every great man is a great woman"
By the early seventies, Lennon and Ono were writing explicitly feminist material and he was being asked in interview after interview to justify her presence at his side — questions he found both stupid and revealing. The line fits him. The source, again, is missing.
Behind Every Great Man print →
Part four: three he definitely didn't say
"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time"
This one first appears in print in 1912, in a novel called Phrynette Married by Marthe Troly-Curtin — twenty-eight years before Lennon was born. Over the decades it has also been credited to Bertrand Russell, T.S. Eliot and Søren Kierkegaard, none of whom said it either.
It still sounds like him, which is presumably why it stuck.
Time You Enjoy Wasting print →
"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."
The earliest traceable version is Brazilian — the writer Fernando Sabino published it in 1988, crediting it to his own father. The first time anyone attached Lennon's name to it appears to be around 2011, thirty-one years after his death.
It's now one of the most-shared "Lennon quotes" in existence.
Everything Will Be Okay print →
"It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love or how you love. It matters only that you love."
This time we know exactly who did say it. The line belongs to the poet and songwriter Rod McKuen, who was closing his concerts with a shorter version by 1971: it doesn't matter who you love or how you love, but that you love. The New York Times quoted him saying it in April that year, and it later appeared in his poem "Creed."
The expanded version — the one that adds where, why and when — only surfaces online in 1997, seventeen years after Lennon's death, with no source attached. It has since been printed in books, put on badges every Pride, and quoted by people who would be surprised to learn they're quoting a man who sold more poetry records than almost anyone in America.
McKuen was openly bisexual, and meant the line precisely as it reads.
It Matters Not Who You Love print →
Frequently asked questions
What is John Lennon's most famous quote?
"War is over (if you want it)" reached the largest audience of anything he said outside a song — billboards in eleven cities in December 1969, paid for by John and Yoko themselves.
What does "Hair Peace, Bed Peace" mean?
They were the words on two hand-made signs taped to the window of John and Yoko's Amsterdam hotel room during their week-long Bed-In for peace in March 1969, turning a honeymoon into a press event about ending the Vietnam War.
Did John Lennon say "time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time"?
No. The line first appeared in Marthe Troly-Curtin's 1912 novel Phrynette Married, twenty-eight years before Lennon was born.
Did John Lennon say "everything will be okay in the end"?
Almost certainly not. The earliest known version is from the Brazilian writer Fernando Sabino in 1988, and the attribution to Lennon only appears around 2011.
Who said "it matters not who you love, only that you love"?
Rod McKuen. The poet and songwriter was using a shorter version to close his concerts by April 1971, and it appears in his poem "Creed." The longer wording was attached to Lennon's name online in 1997 without any source.