A popular saying on the Internet, attributed to a British musician, is that his mother told him that happiness is the key to life. We decided to see if he had ever said anything like that.
The full quote, purportedly from Lennon, reads: “When I was five years old, my mother always told me that the key to life was happiness. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote: “Happy.” They told me that I didn’t understand the assignment, and then I told them that they don’t understand anything in life.” The statement can be found at websites With selections famous quotes people and on entertaining portals. This story publish social network users (“VKontakte", Facebook*, Instagram*), blogging platforms And YouTube. This quote was also published by the media, for example, the Kazakh version of the magazine Esquire.
“Verified” was unable to find at least one similar publication indicating where and when John Lennon told this story. IN database, collected by fans and researchers of The Beatles, there is nothing like it - and it consists of more than 160 interviews and transcripts of press conferences of the group and its members from 1962 to 1984. This quote is not found in books written by Lennon himself - “I write as it is spelled", "Spaniard in the wheel" And "Oral scripture" It was also not possible to find it in any letters musician, nor in the memoirs of one of Lennon’s contemporaries.
In addition, questions are raised by the fact that the quote mentions the musician’s mother: right from the age of five he raised the aunt to whom Lennon was given into care. Later, the mother of the future musician appeared in his life, then disappeared again, until she died in 1957, when John was only 17 years old. Memories of his mother were traumatic for Lennon, because of them he even applied to the services of a psychotherapist, so it seems doubtful that he could remember her in such a way. In 1970, the musician released the song Mother, where, in particular, there were the following words: “Mom, I was with you, but I never had you.”
The statement in question in Russian differs slightly from publication to publication. This indirectly indicates that the quote initially appeared in a foreign language, most likely English, and then found its way into the Russian-language segment of the Internet. A portal specializing in verifying the authenticity of quotes The Quote Investigator I discovered that the earliest instance of this quote being published on the Internet is fast on the Tumblr platform, dating back to 2008 and receiving many likes and shares. It was probably from there that the statement spread across the Internet, but it was not possible to discover who and when first attributed it to John Lennon.
A very similar story is found in the memoirs of Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn “Lotus growing in the mud", published in 2005. Hawn says that at age 11 she was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. The future artist replied that she wanted to become happy, and when she was asked if she wanted to become a ballerina or, for example, an actress, she repeated that she just wanted to be happy. At the same time, according to The Quote Investigator, jokes with similar wording: “What do you want to be when you grow up? “Happy,” have been encountered before, for example, in the comics of The Peanuts magazine back in the 1960s.
Thus, there is no reason to believe that John Lennon ever actually wrote or said the quote in question about happiness, or even anything close to it. The statement could not be found in any of the musician’s interviews, as well as in his books, letters or memoirs about him. In addition, the details of Lennon’s biography indirectly argue against the fact that he could say something like that.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Instagram and Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: Eric Koch / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
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