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

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.
Impossibility
Possibility
Says
Challenges
Shows
Someone

More quotes by John Cage

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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.
John Cage
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...we make our lives by what we love.
John Cage
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Music is a means of rapid transportation.
John Cage
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I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
John Cage
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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
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Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression free as a bird, Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, You know? They're not free: they're fighting over bits of food.
John Cage
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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
John Cage
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In the dark, all cats are black.
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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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
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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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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
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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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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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When we separate music from life we get is art.
John Cage
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
John Cage
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Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
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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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
John Cage
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
John Cage