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The Beatles Quotes

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The Beatles were a phenomenally popular band and had huge impact on many different genres of music and popular culture.

I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.
--Timothy Leary

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.'"
-- Kurt Vonnegut


Portrait of an Era

Portrait of an Era Art Print
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John Lennon Quotes

John Lennon
  • My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role is to try and express what we all feel. Not as a preacher, but as a reflection of us all


  • I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus."

  • Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We're pacifists, but I'm not sure what it means when you're such a pacifist that you get shot. I can never understand that.

  • When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream

  • Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans

  • We all have Hitler in us, but we also have love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?

  • We never thought of miming songs at concerts. That would be cheating, wouldn't it?

  • For our last number, I'd like to ask your help. The people in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, just rattle your jewelry.
    (Royal Variety Performance in London (4 November 1963) attended by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret. John had intended to say "fucking jewelry", but was persuaded against doing so by Paul McCartney and the group's manager Brian Epstein.)

  • 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 really thought that love would save us all.


    • John Lennon

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    Paul McCartney Quotes

    Paul McCartney
  • 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.

  • Personally, I think you can put any interpretation you want on anything, but when someone suggests that 'Can't Buy Me Love' is about a prostitute, I draw the line. That's going too far.

  • With life and all I've been through, I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit. I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good's become God with 'o' out, and evil's become Devil with a 'd' added. That's my theory of religion.

  • The basic thing in my mind was that for all our success The Beatles were always a great little band. Nothing more, nothing less.

  • I am alive and well and unconcerned about the rumors of my death. But if I were dead, I would be the last to know.

  • When we were starting off as kids, just the idea of maybe going to do this as a living instead of getting what we thought was going to be a boring job, was exciting.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • The Beatles Stereo Box Set

    Hard black glossy lift top with magnet clasp
    CDs packaged in three panel digi-pak with digital mini documentaries
    DVD of all 13 mini-documentaries

    The Beatles Stereo Box Set

    Amazon Price: $169.00 (as of 05/29/2012)Buy Now

    Contains:
    Please Please Me
    With The Beatles
    A Hard Day's Night
    Beatles For Sale
    Help!
    Rubber Soul
    Revolver
    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
    Magical Mystery Tour
    The Beatles
    Yellow Submarine
    Abbey Road
    Let It Be
    Past Masters

    George Harrison Quotes

    George Harrison
  • I had no ambition when I was a kid other than to play guitar and get in a rock 'n' roll band. I don't really like to be the guy in the white suit at the front. Like in the Beatles, I was the one who kept quiet at the back and let the other egos be at the front.

  • That's what the whole Sixties Flower-Power thing was about: 'Go away, you bunch of boring people.'

  • You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they're ready to get it.

  • The world is a very serious and, at times, very sad place - but at other times it is all such a joke.

  • Reporter: "Hi, you're not married?"
    George Harrison: "No, I'm George."

  • Anyway, there is one thing I have learned and that is not to dress uncomfortably, in styles which hurt: winklepicker shoes that cripple your feet and tight pants that squash your balls. Indian clothes are better.

  • It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.

  • Try to realize it's all within yourself no one else can make you change, and to see you're only very small and life flows on within you and without you.


    • George Harrison

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    Ringo Starr Quotes

    Ringo Starr
  • When we first started, they basically went John and Paul's way because they were the writers and they would say, "This is the song," and I would play as creatively as I could. Sometimes I would have three people telling me how to do it. They were saying play it this like on that track. I'm saying, "For Christ's sake, there are two drummers there." They could never hear that, you know. You'd have to have four arms to do half the stuff they wanted me to do.

  • First and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things.... But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them.... My soul is that of a drummer.... It came to where I had to make a decision - I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life.

  • The song 'With a Little Help From My Friends' was written speci%uFB01cally for me, but they had one line that I wouldn't sing. It was 'What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?' I said, 'There's not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line,' because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage; and I thought that that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes.

  • I don't collect any memorabilia. I wish I'd have kept everything I had. But who knew you had to keep it. Just gave it away. And we lost so much and we didn't look after a lot of it. I believe Paul's got everything he ever had, but I lost a lot of mine.

  • I met The Beatles while we were playing in Germany. We'd seen them in Liverpool, but they were a nothing little band then, just putting it together. In fact, they weren't really a band at all.

  • He (Brian Epstein) changed our image only in making us a bit smarter. They all (the other Beatles) changed my image. I used to have my hair right back, like a teddy boy, with a Tony Curtis cut and sideboards and suddenly it was, 'Shave them off and put your hair down,' which I did.

  • There's a woman in the United States who predicted the plane we were traveling on would crash. Now, a lot of people would like to think we were scared into saying a prayer. What we did actually--we drank.

  • George (Martin) was the only person who took a chance on us to make a record. Every other label turned us down.

  • And in a marriage you can't TRY and be married. You're married or you're not married... as far as I'm concerned.

  • I couldn't put my finger on one reason why we broke up. It was time, and we were spreading out. They were spreading out more than I was. I would've stayed with the band.

    • Wide selection of The Beatles posters

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    The Beatles Stereo Box Set 

    Original recording remastered

    The Beatles Stereo Box Set

    The Beatles Stereo Box Set

    Amazon Price: $169.00 (as of 05/29/2012)Buy Now

    All 13 Studio remasters plus Past Masters (digi packaging with digital mini documentaries)
    Please Please Me
    With The Beatles
    A Hard Day's Night
    Beatles For Sale
    Help!
    Rubber Soul
    Revolver
    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
    Magical Mystery Tour
    The Beatles
    Yellow Submarine
    Abbey Road
    Let It Be
    Past Masters
    DVD of all 13 mini-documentaries (Running time: 40 minutes)

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