John Cage Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  John Cage

  Listening, Facts, Composing

  52 Copy quote

• 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.

  97 Copy quote

• 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

  96 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Seats

  73 Copy quote

• 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

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  50 Copy quote

• 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

  35 Copy quote

• Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.

  John Cage

  Music, Peace, Noise

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.17, Wesleyan University Press

  5 Copy quote

• Art is whatever you can get away with.

  John Cage

  Art, Get Away, Art Is

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  42 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Finding Yourself, Cages

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  54 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  "Lecture on Nothing" (1961)

  40 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Pieces, Quiet, My Favorite

  "John Cage".

  37 Copy quote

• 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

  47 Copy quote

• Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

  John Cage

  Ideas, Happens, One Thing

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  15 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Moving, Accepted, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

• I like being moved. I don't like being pushed.

  John Cage

  Interesting, Moved

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  27 Copy quote

• My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard

  John Cage

  My Favorite, Music Is, Heard

  11 Copy quote

• There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.

  John Cage

  Laughter, Mean, Order

  11 Copy quote

• All great art is a form of complaint

  John Cage

  Art, Form, Complaints

  8 Copy quote

• Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.

  John Cage

  Music, Practice, Singing

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.28, Wesleyan University Press

  3 Copy quote

• My work became an exploration of non-intention.

  John Cage

  Exploration, Intention

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

  3 Copy quote

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