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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.
Operations
Soul
Music
Time
Edifying
Operation
Sets

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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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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.
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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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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.
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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
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Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
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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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The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
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Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
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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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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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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
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My work became an exploration of non-intention.
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My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard
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When I went to the analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting, he said, 'I'll be able to fix you so that you'll write much more music than you do now.' I said, 'Good heavens! I already write too much, it seems to me.' That promise of his put me off.
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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
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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.
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