John Cage Quotes - Page 3

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Art Celebration Feelings Harmony Listening Mistakes Music

Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.

John Cage

Sound, Excellent, Heard

John Cage, James Joyce (1982). “Roaratorio: ein irischer Circus über Finnegans wake”, Athenaum

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Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.

John Cage

Art, Design, Trying

John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.39, Wesleyan University Press

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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.

John Cage

Woods

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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.

John Cage

Errors, Events, Actuality

Silence 1961 45' for a Speaker

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People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.

John Cage

Art, Inspiration, People

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Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.

John Cage

Art, Helping, Fluent

John Cage (1970). “John Cage”

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Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want

John Cage

Money, Needs, Want

John Cage (2010). “M: Writings ’67–’72”, p.205, Wesleyan University Press

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A mind that is interested in changing...is interested precisely in the things that are at extremes. I'm certainly like that. Unless we go to extremes, we won't get anywhere.

John Cage

Change, Mind, Extremes

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What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

John Cage

Writing, Order, Play

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A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.

John Cage

Music, Mistake, Happens

Pierre Boulez, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, John Cage, Robert Samuels (1995). “The Boulez-Cage Correspondence”, p.107, Cambridge University Press

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I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.

John Cage

Trying, Unfamiliar

John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.6, Wesleyan University Press

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An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he'll arrive before death overtakes him.

John Cage

Art, Moving, Before Death

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

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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

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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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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.

John Cage

Courage, Accepting, Unafraid

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Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.

John Cage

Carpe Diem, Thinking, Enjoy

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Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical? What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?

John Cage

School, Passing By, People

John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.55, Wesleyan University Press

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Out of the work comes the work.

John Cage

Work

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We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.

John Cage

Life, Understanding, Involved

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Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?

John Cage

Letting Go, Fire, Long

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

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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

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When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.

John Cage

Acting, Philosopher, Can Do

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In the dark, all cats are black.

John Cage

Cat, Dark, Black

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The function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation. Our understanding of her manner of operation&Rdquo; changes according to advances in the sciences.

John Cage

Art, Nature, Science

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When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic - here on Sixth Avenue, for instance - I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound... I don’t need sound to talk to me.

John Cage

Talking, Ideas, Feelings

Interview with Miroslav Sebestik (1991), as quoted in Miroslav Sebestik's documentary "Listen" (ARTE France Developpement), 2003.

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Born: September 5, 1912
Died: August 12, 1992
Occupation: Composer
Cite this Page: Citation

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