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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.
Sets
Operations
Soul
Music
Time
Edifying
Operation

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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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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.
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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.
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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
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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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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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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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When we separate music from life we get is art.
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As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.
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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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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
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Art is whatever you can get away with.
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
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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.
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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
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We only hear what we listen for.
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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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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.
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Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one's mail in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests.
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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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