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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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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.
Letting
Thoughts
Cold
Dead
Fire
Though
Long
Ashes

More quotes by John Cage

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The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
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Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
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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?
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If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
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People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
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When we separate music from life we get is art.
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...we make our lives by what we love.
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
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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.
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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.
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I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
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We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
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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Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing
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Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.
John Cage
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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
John Cage