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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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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.
Divine
Influence
Purpose
Making
Susceptible
Art
Influences
Music
Sober
Mind
Thus
Quiet

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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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...we make our lives by what we love.
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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
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Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
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The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.
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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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When I went to the analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting, he said, 'I'll be able to fix you so that you'll write much more music than you do now.' I said, 'Good heavens! I already write too much, it seems to me.' That promise of his put me off.
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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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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
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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.
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