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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.

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.
Become
May
Attractively
Work
Perfecting
Consists
Responsibility
Interest
Artist

More quotes by John Cage

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If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
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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.
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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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My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?
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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
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Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
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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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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
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The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.
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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
John Cage
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Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
John Cage
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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 world, the real is not an object. It is a process.
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Each moment presents what happens.
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For myself and my own experience now, I don't really need any music. I have enough to listen to with just the sounds of the environment. I listen to the sounds of 6th avenue.
John Cage
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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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