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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
Work
Attractively
Perfecting
Consists
Responsibility
Interest
Artist

More quotes by John Cage

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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.
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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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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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Out of the work comes the work.
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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
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Art is whatever you can get away with.
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Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
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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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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
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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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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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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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Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?
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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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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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