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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.
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.
Turns
Human
Humans
Thing
Grand
Mind
Tables
Ultimate
Meaning
Turn
More quotes by John Cage
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.
John Cage
We only hear what we listen for.
John Cage
Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
John Cage
Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
John Cage
There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
John Cage
Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
John Cage
The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
John Cage
Out of the work comes the work.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
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?
John Cage
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
Music is a means of rapid transportation.
John Cage
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
John Cage
Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
John Cage
Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.
John Cage
