"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
— John Lennon

January 1, 1970

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Political activistsThe BeatlesActivists from EnglandSocialists from EnglandAgnostics
Original Language: English

Sources

"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)"; similar expressions were used by others prior to Lennon's use of this line, and have been attributed to Betty Talmadge, Thomas La Mance, Margaret Millar, William Gaddis, and Lily Tomlin, but the earliest known published occurrence was the 1957 attribution of "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." to Allen Saunders in Reader's Digest, according to The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes