John Cage quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John Cage

John Cage Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from John Cage on Wise Famous Quotes.

The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accordance with nature, in her manner of operation.

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

College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.

If you don't have enough time to accomplish something, consider the work finished once it's begun.

We need not destroy the past. It is gone.

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

Everything I see is something I haven't memorized.

The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.

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

Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.

The world is teeming; anything can happen.

We're breaking all of the rules, even our own rules, and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.

There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.

Beware of losing what isn't in your head.

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

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

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

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.

One need not fear for the future of music.

Each moment presents what happens.

Music is a means of rapid transportation.

Sleep's what we need. It produces an emptiness in us into which sooner or later energies flow.

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.

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

Freedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.

There is nothing we need to do that isn't dangerous.

We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable.

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.

There's nothing we really need to do that isn't dangerous

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.

All great art is a form of complaint

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

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

There are no secrets.It's just we thought that they said dead. When they said bread.

When we separate music from life we get art.

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

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

I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetry
as I need it.

The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.

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

I want my writing to be as clear as water I can see through so that what I experienced is told without my being in any way in the way.

I don't need sound to talk to me,

We only hear what we listen for.

No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.

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.

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

If there are questions then, of course, there are answers, but the final answer makes the questions seem absurd.

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.

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

Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.

As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.

My work became an exploration of non-intention.

A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.

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

Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing

With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano, if you have at your disposal an exploded keyboard.

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

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

Everything we do is Music

Where does beauty begin? Where does it end? Where it ends is where the artist begins.

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.

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

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

We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.

We make our lives by what we love.

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

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

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

There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent
to a gang bent on destruction.

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.

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.

Theatre takes place all the time - wherever one is - and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case.

Valda said that if you change your residence every six months you can legally free your children from compulsory education.

Out of the work comes the work.

Now we have come to the end of the part about structure. However, it occurs to me to say more about structure.

Farting, don't think, just fart.

It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.

The reason we life black people isn't because they're black. We like them because they're not as grey as we are.

I discovered that those who seldom dwell on their emotions know better than anyone else just what an emotion is.

Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.

A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.

Everything we do is music." (Classical Composer)(From: 4'33")

We are not committed to this or that. We are committed to the nothing in-between, whether we know it or not.

I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.

In our forests
part divine
and makes her heart palpitate
wild and tame are one. What a delicious Sound!

If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.

The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.

Why make art ? To quiet the mind thus making it susceptible to divine influences.

In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.

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

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.

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.

In an utter emptiness anything can take place.

Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do.

Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right ...

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

Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.

Every something is an echo of nothing