We announce the birth of a conceptual country, NEWTOPIA. Citizenship of the country can be obtained by declaration of your awareness of NEWTOPIA. NEWTOPIA has no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people. NEWTOPIA has no laws other than cosmic. All people of NEWTOPIA are ambassadors of the country. As two ambassadors of NEWTOPIA, we ask for diplomatic immunity and recognition in the United Nations of our country and our people.
Interpretation
NEWTOPIA symbolizes a free and boundary-less society based on awareness and collective identity.
In this quote, John Lennon introduces the idea of NEWTOPIA as a conceptual nation that transcends physical boundaries and traditional government structures. It emphasizes the importance of individual awareness and collective connection among people, suggesting that true citizenship is based on shared values and beliefs rather than territorial claims or legal systems, advocating for a universal culture of peace and understanding.
In practice
During a speech on global unity, one might reference Lennon's vision of NEWTOPIA to emphasize the need for collective awareness.
When I get older losing my hair many years from now. Will you still be sending me a Valentine. Birthday greetings, bottle of wine? If I'd been out till quarter to three would you lock the door? Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty-four?
The writing of the Beatles, or John and Paul's contribution to the Beatles in the late sixties - had a kind of depth to it, a more mature, more intellectual approach. We were different people, we were older. We knew each other in all kinds of different ways than when we wrote together as teenagers and in our older twenties.
I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.
I've been baking bread and looking after the baby...Everyone else who has asked me that question over the last few years says. 'But what else have you been doing?' To which I say, 'Are you kidding?' Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job. After I made the loaves [of bread,] I felt like I had conquered something. But as I watched the bread being eaten, I thought, Well, Jesus, don't I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?
There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it. And when we turn around to find the self which knows this moment, we find that it has vanished like the past.
A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.
Smack in the centre of contradiction is the place to be.
Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of 'I know.' Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.
The willingness to be self-critical in England is much greater than the willingness to be self-critical in America.
What is life but a series of inspired follies.
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