We all love to share nice inspiring happy peaceful John Lennon quotes. But.

He wasn’t all icon. He was human:

This life is a path. None of us are perfect. All of us make mistakes. Some of us make mistakes that hurt others. The question is: which direction will we travel? Will we wake up? Tomorrow is the anniversary of John Lennon’s tragic death. Let us honor the real man, not the icon—and in so doing embrace our own failures so that we might engage our potential to be of benefit to others. ~ ed.

For more: Amazing Animation of 1969 Lennon Interview [Great Video on Peace!]

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“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

~ Oscar Wilde

Getting Better all the Time:

It is a diary form of writing. All that “I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved” was me.

I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything’s the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am not violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.

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“Today I learned John Lennon was not as peaceful of a man as so many believe. He was physically violent toward women, and beat his first wife, Cynthia Lennon.”

“I used to be cruel to my woman I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved…Man I was mean but I’m changing my scene and I’m doing the best that I can.”
~ John Lennon

He wasn’t all love. He was human.

He could be unpleasant. He beat his first wife. He evolved. Mostly. He could be cruel to his sons.

And yet, he’s revered as a modern secular hippie peace loving saint.

Both can be true. We create idols, we put said idols on pedestals, only to knock them off and crush them. He never claimed to be perfect. His karma was inherited, and he did mostly good, wonderful, world-changing things with it.

He was well aware of his failings. He did his best, which was sometimes horrible, terrible, sad…and usually wonderful, something to be grateful for. He admitted his worse, singing about it in several songs (below). He was transparent—which is a kind of brave openness that helps to end a problem, a habitual pattern.

Moral of the story: humans change, evolve. Give peace a chance.

All we need is love?

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As one Redditor comments:

“I think Jimi Hendrix takes the cake for being an asshole to women. He beat the shit out of one of his girlfriends with a public telephone after he thought she was calling another man. He also hit another girlfriend with a bottle of booze because he was drunk and got jealous, she later required stitches

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In response to McCartney’s line, “It’s getting better all the time”,

Lennon replies, “It can’t get no worse!”^[5]

Referring to the lyric “I used to be cruel to my woman/I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved/Man I was mean but I’m changing my scene/And I’m doing the best that I can”, Lennon admitted that he had done things in relationships in the past that he was not proud of.

I’d rather see you dead little girl than to see you with another man: catch you with another man, that’s the end, little girl:

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Read more:

John Lennon on Love & Happiness.