Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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.
Term
Substitute
Word
Substitutes
Sound
Piano
Music
Meaningful
Instruments
Sacred
Eighteenth
Organization
Nineteenth
Century
Reserved

More quotes by John Cage

Image
To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
John Cage
Image
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
John Cage
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
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
Image
There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.
John Cage
Image
When we separate music from life we get is art.
John Cage
Image
Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
John Cage
Image
Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
John Cage
Image
As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
John Cage
Image
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
John Cage
Image
There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage
Image
If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
John Cage
Image
I don't need sound to talk to me.
John Cage
Image
Out of the work comes the work.
John Cage
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
John Cage
Image
I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
John Cage
Image
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.
John Cage
Image
Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
John Cage
Image
For myself and my own experience now, I don't really need any music. I have enough to listen to with just the sounds of the environment. I listen to the sounds of 6th avenue.
John Cage