All you need is love.

The line is best known from the Beatles’ 1967 single “All You Need Is Love,” written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The song was commissioned for “Our World,” the first live, satellite-linked international television broadcast, and was performed by the Beatles on 25 June 1967 from EMI Studios (Abbey Road) in London. Conceived as a simple, universally intelligible message during the “Summer of Love,” it aligned with the era’s idealism and the band’s public image after Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Lennon’s refrain distilled a utopian sentiment meant to communicate across languages and borders.

As a slogan-like refrain, “All you need is love” asserts that love is the fundamental human necessity—morally, socially, and even politically—outweighing material or ideological divisions. Its power lies in deliberate simplicity: it functions less as a philosophical proof than as a rallying cry, inviting collective assent and emotional unity. In the context of a global broadcast, the phrase becomes a kind of cultural diplomacy, proposing empathy and solidarity as the basis for peace. At the same time, its absolutism can be read as aspirational rather than literal, expressing an ideal to strive toward rather than a complete account of human needs.

“All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.”