John Lennon Quotes

It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.

Like an enemy I knew as intimately as any friend, I came to know the nagging, constant emptiness of the incongruent life. I ignored myself and lived for people, purposes, and goals that weren't my own. I betrayed who I was and instead accepted a fictional substitute that was defined from the outside in.

We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.

Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our life trying to satisfy other people's demands. We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

Our biggest struggle as human beings is to project ourselves as something that society has deemed admirable or likable instead of being honest.

I didn't know who the hell I was. I was whoever they wanted me to be.

When you have a lot of people telling you what you are and perceiving you in a certain way, it's difficult to find your own identity.

If you start trying to figure out yourself from the image everyone has of you, you run into a dead end.

I always knew who I was, but everyone else wanted to me to be their 'idea' of the 'right' artist. At times, I even believed them.

In life, we are told to do or be so many different things and expected to fit so many different expectations; I think that's something I always had a hard time with.

The pressure of looking a certain way and having to present yourself a certain way is hard. It's difficult to feel genuine about yourself when you feel the pressure of being a certain person.

Having to stake out your identity and have people question whether or not you're being yourself was a tension that I could relate to.

The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations.

Eventually every man gotta face the problem of tryin' to figger if it's worthwhile to prove that he is himself.

I've spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do...being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it's horrid to be someone else's vision of yourself.

Men tend to define themselves by what they do, and so if you're dealing with a character who's trying to figure that out, or multiple characters, then there's something there for guys, too.

I used to want to kill myself because I had lost so much of who I knew I was because of all the other invalidation from people. It sends you spiraling where you're like, Wait, I know I have this quality, I know what my integrity is - until you're being fed all this false information about yourself. You start to wonder why. You don't feel good about yourself because you no longer believe in yourself.

A women who does not know herself has no choice other than to live with other people's evaluations.

Today, a young person that doesn't know themselves will totally be sold some other situation. Let's do your avatar. You know? And young people are going out, spending what little they have to try to buy themselves when they don't have themselves, or they feel like they don't have themselves. To me, that's like a damn pimp tragedy.

Don't get confused with what people say you are, with who you know you are.

That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.

Many times people will say, you know, you're such a great role model. Well, that's great, but at the end of the day, you have to learn to be your own best role model and learn what makes you happy, not necessarily what society thinks you're supposed to be or women that you look up to, what they're doing. I look at that as being a symbol in a blueprint, but never forget that who you are is what's most important.

She had for so many years been trying to be like other people, that she was now like nothing in heaven or earth.

Don't let what other people think decide who you are.

Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.