John Cage Quotes

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• There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

  John Cage

  Life, Music, Time

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.22, Wesleyan University Press

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• I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

  John Cage

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  "Conversing with Cage". Book by Richard Kostelanetz, 1988.

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• Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.

  John Cage

  Seats

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• If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.

  John Cage

  Moving, Accepted, Ifs

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• The world is no longer a romantic place; some of its people still are however, and therein lies the promise. Don't let the world win.

  John Cage

  Dream, Lying, Winning

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• Look at everything. Don't close your eyes to the world around you. Look and become curious and interested in what there is to see.

  John Cage

  Grateful, Eye, Looks

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• When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.

  John Cage

  Art, Past, Ideas

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• The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

  John Cage

  Beauty, Beautiful, Reality

  "Happy Birthday, John Cage! Celebrate What Would Be The Composer’s 101st With His Little-Seen Visual Art" by Kate Abbey-Lambertz, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 5, 2013.

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• Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.

  John Cage

  Order, Mind, Desire

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.109, Wesleyan University Press

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• Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.

  John Cage

  Finding Yourself, Cages

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• If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

  John Cage

  Inspirational, Music, Eight

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• If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

  John Cage

  Music, Cutting, Ego

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• The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.

  John Cage

  Silence, Sound, Integrating

  Pierre Boulez, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, John Cage, Robert Samuels (1995). “The Boulez-Cage Correspondence”, p.38, Cambridge University Press

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• The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.

  John Cage

  Listening, Facts, Composing

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• My favorite piece of music is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.

  John Cage

  Pieces, Quiet, My Favorite

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• I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.

  John Cage

  "Lecture on Nothing" (1961)

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• Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

  John Cage

  Ideas, Happens, One Thing

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• It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of 'culture.'

  John Cage

  Mean, Listening, Acquisition

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.78, Wesleyan University Press

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• After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, ‘In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony.’ I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, ‘In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.’

  John Cage

  Wall, Writing, Order

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• I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.

  John Cage

  Running, Book, Reading

  John Cage, Richard Kostelanetz (1993). “John Cage, writer: previously uncollected pieces”, Amadeus Press

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• All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear I know nothing.

  John Cage

  Thinking, Sometimes, Method

  John Cage (2011). “Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.18, Wesleyan University Press

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• It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

  John Cage

  Thinking, Somewhere Else, Irritating

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• Art is whatever you can get away with.

  John Cage

  Art, Get Away, Art Is

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• Good music can act as a guide to good living.

  John Cage

  Guides, Good Living

  John Cage (1970). “John Cage”

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• What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.

  John Cage

  Attitude, People, Tourists

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