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All great art is a form of complaint

John Cage

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John Cage
Age: 79 †
Born: 1912
Born: September 5
Died: 1992
Died: August 2
Composer
Illustrator
Music Theorist
Musician
Musicologist
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
LA
California
John Milton Cage Jr.
John Milton Cage
Jr.
John Milton
Jr. Cage
J. C.
Art
Form
Great
Complaint
Complaints

More quotes by John Cage

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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
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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
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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
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So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?
John Cage
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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
John Cage
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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
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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
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Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
John Cage
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Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
John Cage
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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
John Cage
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A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
John Cage
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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
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Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.
John Cage
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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
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Each moment presents what happens.
John Cage
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...we make our lives by what we love.
John Cage
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
John Cage
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Out of the work comes the work.
John Cage
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It is not futile to do what we do. We wake up with energy and we do something. And we make, of course, failures and we make mistakes, but we sometimes get glimpses of what we might do next.
John Cage
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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
John Cage