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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.
Complaint
Complaints
Art
Form
Great

More quotes by John Cage

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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
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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
John Cage
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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
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The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
John Cage
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In the dark, all cats are black.
John Cage
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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
John Cage
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As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.
John Cage
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The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.
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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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
John Cage
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It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
John Cage
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Food, one assumes, provides nourishment but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.
John Cage
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A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
John Cage
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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
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The attitude I take is that everyday life is more interesting than forms of celebration, when we become aware of it. That when is when our intentions go down to zero. Then suddenly you notice that the world is magical.
John Cage
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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
John Cage
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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
John Cage
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My work became an exploration of non-intention.
John Cage
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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
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The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away.
John Cage