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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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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.
Something
Woods
Shouldn
Looking
Rather

More quotes by John Cage

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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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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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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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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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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
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Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
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Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
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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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When we separate music from life we get is art.
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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.
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Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.
John Cage
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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.
John Cage
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Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
John Cage
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What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.
John Cage
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
John Cage
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Art is whatever you can get away with.
John Cage