Quote

Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.

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.
Nothing
Owning
Recording
Celebration
Singing
Imagine
Practice
Music

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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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
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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.
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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
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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.
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There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent to a gang bent on destruction.
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Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
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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.
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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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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
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The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.
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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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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
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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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Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want
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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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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
John Cage