Wikiquote

Paul McCartney

English musician and member of the Beatles (born 1942)

Sir James Paul McCartney, CH, MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, entrepreneur, record and film producer, poet, painter, and animal rights and peace activist. He became famous as a founding member of The Beatles and Wings.

In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Quotes

edit
 
Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away.
 
The long and winding road that leads to your door
Will never disappear,
I've seen that road before it always leads me here,
Leads me to your door.
  • She's lovely, great. She was very friendly. She was just like a mum to us.
    • About Queen Elizabeth II, in an interview after the Beatles received their MBEs from her (26 October 1965)
  • I really wish the people that look sort of in anger at the 'weirdos,' at the happenings, at the psychedelic freak-out, would instead of just looking with anger, just look with nothing; with no feeling; be unbiased about it. They really don't realize that what these people are talking about is something that they really want themselves. It's something that everyone wants. You know, it's personal freedom to be able to talk and be able to say things And it's dead straight! It's a real sort of basic pleasure for everyone. But it looks weird from the outside.
    • From the TV show "It's So Far Out It's Straight Down", 18.1.1967
  • 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.
  • We probably seem to be anti-religious...none of us believes in God.
    • Hit Parader (January 1970)
  • “You’re up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It’s a fine spring day. We’re riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is a clear blue." I had barely got to the end of the sentence when she closed her eyes and gently slipped away. She was unique, and the world is a better place for having known her. I love you, Linda.
    • Last words to his wife, Linda, as recounted by McCartney in a statement released to the press three days after her death; as quoted in "Linda's Death 'Heartbreak' for McCartney" by Emma Ross, Tucson Citizen (April 21, 1998), p. B1
  • When I see bacon, I see a pig, I see a little friend, and that's why I can't eat it. Simple as that. But I'll eat Linda's veggie bacon. All her food was so good.
    • Animal Times interview, Fall, 1998
  • Steve Martin came around for a barbecue once. I was grilling and he said, “Oh, no, I can’t have any of that.” I asked why not and he said, “Sorry, I’m vegetarian.” I said, “You didn’t know we are?! Everything on the grill is veggie!” He said, “Ahhh” and ate three veggie burgers and then asked where he could buy them.
    • Animal Times interview, Fall, 1998
 
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.
  • 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.
    • The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 96
  • We're constantly being asked all sorts of very profound questions. But we're not very profound people. People say, 'What do you think of the H-bomb, of religion, of fan worship?' But we didn't really start thinking about these things until people asked us. And even then we didn't get much time to consider them. What do I think of the H-bomb? Well, here's an answer with the full weight of five O levels and one A level behind it: I don't agree with it.
    • The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 109
  • I don't have any desire to learn. I feel it's like a voodoo, that it would spoil things if I actually learnt how things are done.
    • Of arranging, The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 175
  • While the others had got married and moved out to suburbia, I had stayed in London and got into the arts scene through friends like Robert Fraser and Barry Miles and papers like The International Times. We opened the Indica gallery with John Dunbar, Peter Asher and people like that. I heard about people like John Cage, and that he’d just performed a piece of music called 4’33” (which is completely silent) during which if someone in the audience coughed he would say, ‘See?’ Or someone would boo and he’d say, ‘See? It’s not silence—it’s music.’ I was intrigued by all of that. So these things started to be part of my life. I was listening to Stockhausen; one piece was all little plink-plonks and interesting ideas. Perhaps our audience wouldn’t mind a bit of change, we thought, and anyway, tough if they do! We only ever followed our own noses—most of the time, anyway. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was one example of developing an idea.
    • The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 212
  • 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 Beatles Anthology (2000)
  • For cruelty to animals, vegetarianism is the great thing to get rid of that. For the planet, to prevent depleting the water and the land and everything, it’s a great idea. And I think it’s a great thing for your health, and doctors nowadays agree with that. There are plenty of great books and organizations, so no matter where you are, there is someone to help you. That’s your first step, and I think your second step is just look in the supermarket for good vegetarian food, and I think it’s so much more readily available now.
  • We thought we'd be really big in Liverpool.
    • On the Beatles' early expectations of their success (2007 interview with Larry King)
  • I tend not to say much on the phone now. If I leave a message, it's benign. You edit yourself according to the new circumstances of the new world. I think it would be quite good to get some sort of laws.
    • Discussing phone hacking [1]
  • I'd like to be able to go on holiday and not to have to hold my belly in for two whole weeks.
    • Of his fear that paparazzi would take unflattering photos [2]

Lyrics

edit

The Beatles

edit

Songs credited to Lennon–McCartney:

  • Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
    Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
    Oh, I believe in yesterday.
  • Why she had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say
    I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
    • "Yesterday", from Help! (1965)
  • Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
    Now I need a place to hide away.
    Oh, I believe in yesterday.
    • "Yesterday", from Help! (1965)
  • I want her everywhere
    and if she's beside me I know I need never care.
    But to love her is to need her Everywhere, knowing that love is to share
    each one believing that love never dies
    watching her eyes and hoping I'm always there.
    • "Here, There and Everywhere" (1966)
  • Will you still need me,
    will you still feed me,
    when I'm sixty-four?
  • Hey Jude, don't make it bad
    Take a sad song and make it better.
    Remember to let her into your heart
    Then you can start to make it better.
  • And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
    • "The End"; The last full song track of Abbey Road (1969) the last Beatles album to be recorded before the band broke up. (Let It Be was the last album released, but had been recorded earlier.)
  • The long and winding road that leads to your door
    Will never disappear,
    I've seen that road before it always leads me here,
    Leads me to your door.

Wings

edit
  • You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs
    I look around me and I see it isn't so
    Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs
    And what's wrong with that?
    I'd like to know
    'Cause here I go again...
    I love you.

Solo

edit

Quotes about Paul McCartney

edit
  • Even legendary musician Paul McCartney weighed in. In his foreword to a new book against Arctic drilling by Greenpeace activist Ben Stewart, McCartney wrote, "As the ice retreats, the oil giants are moving in. Instead of seeing the melting as a grave warning to humanity, they are eyeing the previously inaccessible oil beneath the seabed at the top of the world. They're exploiting the disappearance of the ice to drill for the very same fuel that caused the melting in the first place."
    • Amy Goodman Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America (2017) p 237
edit
 
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
 
Commons
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_McCartney&oldid=3559936"