John Cage Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

  John Cage

  Ideas, Happens, One Thing

  16 Copy quote

• Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.

  John Cage

  Music, Art, Mind

  "Visual Art: To Sober and Quiet the Mind". Book by John Cage, 2007.

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• 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

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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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• 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

  48 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

  29 Copy quote

• Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

  John Cage

  Curiosity, Judgment, Awareness

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

  31 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Moving, Accepted, Ifs

  6 Copy quote

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

  John Cage

  Interesting, Moved

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• What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.

  John Cage

  Nature, Woods, Ifs

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

  John Cage

  Guides, Good Living

  John Cage (1970). “John Cage”

  40 Copy quote

• ...we make our lives by what we love.

  John Cage

  Live By, Our Lives

  John Cage (1961). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.114, Wesleyan University Press

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• We need not destroy the past. It is gone.

  John Cage

  Music, Past, Needs

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

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• A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.

  John Cage

  Rain, Mushrooms, Meals

  John Cage (2010). “A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings”, p.60, Wesleyan University Press

  27 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

  8 Copy quote

• All great art is a form of complaint

  John Cage

  Art, Form, Complaints

  9 Copy quote

• There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

  John Cage

  Poetry, Poetic, Realizing

  John Cage, Daniel Charles (1981). “For the birds”, Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

  29 Copy quote

• Music is a means of rapid transportation.

  John Cage

  Music, Mean, Rapids

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.59, Wesleyan University Press

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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

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

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• If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.

  John Cage

  Music, Meaningful, Organization

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

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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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• 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

  43 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

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• To see, one must go beyond the imiagination and for that one must stand absolutely still as though at the center of a leap.

  John Cage

  Leap, Stills

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

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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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