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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.

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.
Music
Time
Edifying
Operation
Sets
Operations
Soul

More quotes by 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
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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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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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Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want
John Cage
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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.
John Cage
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If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
John Cage
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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.
John Cage
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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
John Cage
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Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing
John Cage
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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
John Cage
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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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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
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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage
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Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
John Cage
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
John Cage
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Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
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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My work became an exploration of non-intention.
John Cage
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In the dark, all cats are black.
John Cage