John Cage Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  89 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.

  87 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Seats

  65 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Moving, Accepted, Ifs

  1 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

  31 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Listening, Facts, Composing

  45 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

  47 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

  43 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Finding Yourself, Cages

  15 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

  37 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

  51 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.

  10 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".

  34 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

  30 Copy quote

• Not one sound fears the silence that extinguishes it. And no silence exists that is not pregnant with sound.

  John Cage

  Silence, Sound, Pregnant

  0 Copy quote

• My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.

  John Cage

  Writing, Order, Favourite

  4 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

  23 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  "Lecture on Nothing" (1961)

  36 Copy quote

• Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

  John Cage

  Ideas, Happens, One Thing

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• Art is whatever you can get away with.

  John Cage

  Art, Get Away, Art Is

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  43 Copy quote

• 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

  38 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Guides, Good Living

  John Cage (1970). “John Cage”

  36 Copy quote

• 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

  "Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music". Book by John Cage, January, 1996.

  22 Copy quote

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