John Quotes

It took me a long time to get selected as an astronaut. In fact, I applied for 20 years before I was selected.

A civilization that only looks inward will stagnate. We have to keep looking outward; we have to keep finding new avenues for human endeavor and human expression.

It so happened that my goals kind of matched my career progression toward becoming an astronaut.

Our salvation never comes in the form we would have chosen.

His life was one long extravaganza, like living inside a Faberge egg.

Criticism is a life without risk.

When we have not the strength or the courage to grasp a new truth, we persuade ourselves that it is not a truth at all.

Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.

Movies are brand new. Film is less than 150 years old. It's brand new, compared to any other art form, all of which are thousands of years old.

In my career, my movies tend to polarize critics.

Directors, like actors, get typecast.

The wonder of imagination is this: It has the power to light its own fire.

While an original is always hard to find, he is easy to recognize.

I’d rather lose a 3:58 mile than win one in 4:10.

I'd like to be doing quality acting in a quality role and making as many people as possible happy.

I love reading. I'm fortunate enough to have signed books by Faulkner, Steinbeck, Thomas Pynchon.

Directing is one of my favourite things to do because I love telling stories and I love working with the individual artists and it's something that I really missed.

The Allegator is the same, as the Crocodile, and differs only in Name.

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.

Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose. That's also what happens in almost every movie - someone is going to win and someone is going to lose.

I like dropping into a small club and playing with some people, trying to help them get a start.

They wasn't gonna give you nothin'. I didn't care as long as they let me play my music. Cash on the spot... You cheat me and I'm gonna get me some money, too.

Since you knew they was goin' to cheat you anyway, I recorded under any name with all of 'em.

I feel like my job is to make impact, spread love, tell great stories, inspire people, that's what I am going to do.

I played classical as a kid.

The best training is to play by ear: trial by fire.

I love independent films, it's the only place as an actor you're totally allowed to breathe.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

My teacher asked me what I want to be when I grow up, I said happy. She told me I don't understand the assignment, I told her she doesn't understand life.

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.

Get back to where you once belonged.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

I believe in everything until it's disproved.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.

What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we’ll sink.

Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was.

Imagine all the people Sharing all the world.

I always was a rebel...but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted...and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow's nest of that ship.

Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

I am not the Beatles. I'm me. Paul isn't the Beatles...The Beatles are the Beatles. Separately, they are separate.

When Yoko [Ono] and I got married, we got terrible racialist letters - you know, warning me that she would slit my throat. Those mainly came from Army people living in Aldershot. Officers.

And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let's stop all the fight.

Millions of mind guerrillas, raising the spirit of peace and love, not war.

We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.

We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget.... They invented LSD to control people and what they did was give us freedom.

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.

The book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, I read it when I was about 17-and-a-half or 18. It changed my life.