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Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.

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.
Living
Art
Trying
Experimental
Station
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More quotes by 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.
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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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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
John Cage
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A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
John Cage
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Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing
John Cage
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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
John Cage
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Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
John Cage
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In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.
John Cage
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All great art is a form of complaint
John Cage
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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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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
John Cage
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One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, 'This end is more important than the other.' After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink.
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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My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.
John Cage
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Music is a means of rapid transportation.
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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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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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?
John Cage
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There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.
John Cage