Quote

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.

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.
Acting
Music
Make
Unconsciously
Consciously
Philosopher
Either

More quotes by John Cage

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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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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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It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
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We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
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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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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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We only hear what we listen for.
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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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Art is whatever you can get away with.
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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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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
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If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
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Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
John Cage
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If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.
John Cage
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When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.
John Cage
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I don't need sound to talk to me.
John Cage
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Guy Nearing told us it's a good idea when hunting mushrooms to have a pleasant goal, a waterfall for instance, and, having reached it, to return another way. When, however, we're obliged to go and come back by the same path, returning we notice mushrooms we hadn't noticed going out.
John Cage