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

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We only hear what we listen for.
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Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
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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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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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I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
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Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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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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Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one's mail in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests.
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.
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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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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.
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In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.
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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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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.
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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.
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Look at everything. Don't close your eyes to the world around you. Look and become curious and interested in what there is to see.
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