George Harrison. In a way, he’s the most overlooked of the Fab Four. He played guitar in the band and wrote some popular songs like “Here Comes The Sun,” but he never had the prowess Paul McCartney and John Lennon had, nor the goofiness of Ringo Starr.
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But in that way, he actually does stand out. The ever-changing, thoughtful, quiet philosopher king of the band.
With so much talent and success to his name, with such a career both with the Beatles and as a solo artist, one may wonder: what did Harrison, who passed away in 2001 at the age of 58, have to say about his time with the former Mop Tops, what about his career after, spirituality and the world around him?
Here are the 25 best George Harrison quotes.
1. “The nicest thing is to open the newspapers and not to find yourself in them.”
2. “The Beatles exist apart from myself. I am not really Beatle George. Beatle George is like a suit or shirt that I once wore on occasion, and until the end of my life, people may see that shirt and mistake it for me.”
3. “If I write a tune and people think it’s nice, then that’s fine by me, but I hate having to compete and promote the thing. I really don’t like promotion.”
4. “Although I have guitars all around, and I pick them up occasionally and write a tune and make a record, I don’t really see myself as a musician. It may seem a funny thing to say. It’s just like, I write lyrics, and I make up songs, but I’m not a great lyricist or songwriter or producer. It’s when you put all these things together—that makes me.”
5. “Because we were all from Liverpool, we favored people who were street people.”
6. “Obviously we were having an effect because all these people were clamoring to meet us. Like Muhammad Ali, for instance.”
7. “If we were all perfected beings, we wouldn’t be here in the physical world.”
8. “The adulation or the superstardom is something I could leave out quite happily.”
9. “I wanted to be successful, not famous.”
10. “They gave their money, and they gave their screams. But the Beatles kind of gave their nervous systems. They used us as an excuse to go mad, the world did, and then blamed it on us.”
11. “Gossip is the Devil’s radio.”
12. “I’m not a fan of that sort of punky, heavy, tinny stuff. I like a nice melody.”
13. “Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait.”
14. “I think it was John who really urged me to play sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood,’ which was the first time we used it. Now, Paul has just asked me recently whether I’d written any more of those ‘Indian type of tunes.’ He suddenly likes them now. But at the time, he wouldn’t play on them.”
15. “Try to realize it’s all within yourself. No one else can make you change, and to see you’re only very small and life flows on within you and without you.”
16. “You’ve got as many lives as you like, and more, even ones you don’t want.”
17. “At death, you’re going to be needing some spiritual guidance and some kind of inner knowledge that extends beyond the boundaries of the physical world… it’s what’s inside that counts.”
18. “To the best of my knowledge, none of the Beatles can read music.”
19. “I just write a song, and it just comes out however it wants to. And some of them are catchy songs like ‘Here Comes The Sun,’ and some of them aren’t.”
20. “The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962. The second biggest break since then is getting out of them.”
21. “All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.”
22. “In the end, you’re trying to find God. That’s the result of not being satisfied. And it doesn’t matter how much money, or property, or whatever you’ve got. Unless you’re happy in your heart, then that’s it. And unfortunately, you can never gain perfect happiness unless you’ve got that state of consciousness that enables that.”
23. “I don’t think the Beatles were that good. I think they’re fine. Ringo’s got the best backbeat I’ve ever heard… Paul is a fine bass player… but he’s a bit overpowering at times.”
24. “Hippies are so phony and fake.”
25. “People say I’m the Beatle who changed the most, but to me, that’s what life’s about.”
Photo by Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
