You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.

These lines come from John Lennon’s song “Imagine,” written in 1971 and released on his album Imagine amid the Vietnam War era and a broader climate of Cold War anxiety and social protest. Lennon, increasingly identified with peace activism after the Beatles’ breakup and his highly publicized campaigns with Yoko Ono, framed the song as a simple, hymn-like appeal to envision a world without the divisions that fuel conflict. The quoted couplet appears in the final verse, where Lennon anticipates skepticism toward his utopian vision (“You may say I’m a dreamer”) and answers it by inviting listeners to share the aspiration of global unity.

The speaker acknowledges that imagining a borderless, peaceful world can be dismissed as naïve, yet insists that idealism is not solitary: others already share the hope, and more can choose to join. The shift from “I” to “us” is crucial—it turns private vision into collective movement, suggesting that social change begins as an act of imagination but requires communal adoption. “The world will live as one” compresses a political and ethical program into a lyrical promise: unity is presented not as uniformity, but as the end of antagonistic divisions. The lines function as both self-defense and invitation, making the song’s utopia feel participatory rather than preachy.

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

1) “And the world will live as one.”
2) “I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.”