Quoted as a 1968 statement of Lennon's in Sunday Tasmanian (29 September 1996), and in The Rough Guide to the Beatles (2003) by Chris Ingham, p. 271, this actually derives from a statement which Lennon perhaps had been quoting:
  Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.
 • José Ortega y Gasset, in "Art a Thing of No Consequence" in The Dehumanization of Art (1925)
“

If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

— John Lennon

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness." in the context of "Quoted as a 1968 statement of Lennon's in Sunday Tasmanian (29 September 1996), and in The Rough Guide to the Beatles (2003) by Chris Ingham, p. 271, this actually derives from a statement which Lennon perhaps had been quoting:
  Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.
 • José Ortega y Gasset, in "Art a Thing of No Consequence" in The Dehumanization of Art (1925)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "John Lennon" (Misattributed) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed February 05, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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John Lennon

About John Lennon

John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980), born John Winston Lennon, was a singer, songwriter, guitarist, political activist and founding member of The Beatles. His second wife was Yoko Ono. He was murdered in 1980.