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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.

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.
Simply
Preconceptions
Actuality
Adjust
Error
Immediately
Errors
Failure
Events
Preconception

More quotes by John Cage

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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
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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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My work became an exploration of non-intention.
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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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People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
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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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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 are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
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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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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
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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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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
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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.
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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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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.
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A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
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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