Lennon said it, in exactly these words, to the journalist Peter Lewis in an interview recorded on 6 June 1968 for the BBC 2 arts programme Release, first broadcast on 22 June 1968. Two independent transcripts of that interview carry the sentence verbatim, and an abridged version was later printed in The Beatles Anthology.
“I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives” John Lennon, interviewed by Peter Lewis for the BBC 2 arts programme 'Release'; recorded 6 June 1968, first broadcast 22 June 1968. Verified against transcripts at The Beatles Bible and the Beatles Interviews Database. Via Quotle.info
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of John Lennon — English musician, songwriter and activist. Theme: "I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Programme
Release — BBC 2 arts series
Recorded
Thursday 6 June 1968, EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London
First broadcast
10.05pm, Saturday 22 June 1968
Interviewer
Peter Lewis; Victor Spinetti also present
I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. And I think that’s what I sussed when I was 16 and 12, way down the line. But I expressed it differently all through my life. … But now I can put it into that sentence that I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends, you know.
BBC 2, Release, rec. 6 June 1968
The ellipsis marks Lennon’s aside about expressing the same thing all his life. The Beatles Anthology (2000) prints a shorter form of the same answer, cutting straight from “insane objectives” to the “maniacs for maniacal ends” clause.
The Beatles Bible ↗ transcribes the whole interview and states that it was recorded at EMI Studios on 6 June 1968 for the BBC 2 arts show Release, conducted by Peter Lewis and first broadcast at 10.05pm on 22 June.
A second, independently maintained transcript at the Beatles Interviews Database ↗ reproduces the same answer with the identical opening sentence — two texts, one wording.
Wikiquote ↗ lists the line twice in its sourced Quotes section — once as the 6 June 1968 interview, once from The Beatles Anthology (2000) — and not under its Disputed or Misattributed headings.
The occasion checks out: Wikipedia ↗ confirms the National Theatre Company’s stage version of In His Own Write, adapted by Victor Spinetti and Adrienne Kennedy, opened at the Old Vic on 18 June 1968.
This is spoken word from a television interview recorded and broadcast in 1968, and the book version appears in The Beatles Anthology, first published in 2000 — both well after the 1931 United States public-domain cutoff, so neither is free to reuse. Quotle.info reproduces a short passage for identification and verification only.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets lost in transmission
The attribution is right — Lennon really did say this. What goes wrong is everything around it: the hedge at the front, the source underneath, and the room he was sitting in.
✕
WordingThe printed and circulating text Hedge deleted
The clipped opening is the book’s, not the aggregators’: The Beatles Anthology (2000) prints “Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives,” as Wikiquote ↗ reproduces it, and BrainyQuote ↗ and Goodreads ↗ carry that same text word for word — minus the elision mark, and without saying it came from a book. On tape Lennon begins “I think our society is run by…” — the cut converts a man offering an opinion into a man announcing a fact.
✕
SourcingThe same aggregator pages No citation
Neither page names an interview, a programme, a broadcaster or a date; Goodreads ↗ adds that its quotations are submitted by users and are not verified. The line is perfectly real, but as published there it is unfalsifiable.
✕
Setting“Interviewed at the National Theatre” Wrong room
The National Theatre connection is the play: its company staged In His Own Write at the Old Vic. The Beatles Bible ↗ records that the interview itself was taped at EMI Studios on Abbey Road, with Victor Spinetti alongside him.
✕
WordingThe Beatles Anthology (2000) Compressed
The book prints a condensed version that elides the middle of the answer and joins the two halves — and, as reproduced on Wikiquote ↗, it also drops the opening “I think.” The mid-answer cut is a fair abridgement and is marked as one; the missing hedge is neither, and it is this printed wording that the aggregators go on to copy.
✓What Lennon actually said, on tape: “I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… But now I can put it into that sentence that I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends” — BBC 2, Release, recorded 6 June 1968 ↗.
Context
Why it landed
Lennon was on television to talk about a play — the National Theatre Company’s stage version of his 1964 nonsense book In His Own Write, which opened at the Old Vic on 18 June 1968. The interviewer asked whether the boy in the play, who hates school and organised religion, was really Lennon attacking those things. The answer started politely and then went somewhere else entirely.
What makes the passage worth preserving is what Lennon says next, which almost never travels with the famous sentence: that he expects to be called insane for saying it. He then tells the viewers that half of them are about to ask what on earth he is talking about — which is, in effect, the sentence pre-empting its own reception.
I am liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what is insane about it.
How the interview was made
Per The Beatles Bible ↗, the conversation was recorded at EMI Studios on Abbey Road on 6 June 1968 — the same night the band were at work on the White Album — and the session did not finish until 2.45am. It was then cut into four parts and slotted between extracts from the stage play, which were filmed separately in a BBC studio on 21 June.
That editing explains a small oddity in the finished programme: Peter Lewis’s scene-setting introduction refers to the play having already opened, even though Lennon’s answers were taped before the first night. The framing was added for the 22 June transmission, which is also why the segment is so often described as an interview “at the National Theatre.”
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980 · English musician, songwriter and activist
John Lennon was an English musician, songwriter and activist who found global fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Alongside the songs he was a published writer — his nonsense collection In His Own Write appeared in 1964 — and it was a television interview about the stage version of that book, in June 1968, that produced this line. By then he was moving from wordplay towards open political statement, the register that would define his solo work.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this source
John Lennon, interviewed by Peter Lewis for Release, BBC 2. Interview recorded 6 June 1968 at EMI Studios, Abbey Road, London; first broadcast 10.05pm, 22 June 1968. Transcript: “BBC interview with John Lennon and Victor Spinetti,” The Beatles Bible. An abridged form appears in The Beatles Anthology (Chronicle Books, 2000).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-think-our-society-is-run-by-insane-people-for-insane/