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We only hear what we listen for.

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.
Hear
Listen

More quotes by John Cage

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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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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
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Each moment presents what happens.
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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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All great art is a form of complaint
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
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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.
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The attitude I take is that everyday life is more interesting than forms of celebration, when we become aware of it. That when is when our intentions go down to zero. Then suddenly you notice that the world is magical.
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It is not futile to do what we do. We wake up with energy and we do something. And we make, of course, failures and we make mistakes, but we sometimes get glimpses of what we might do next.
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A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
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The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.
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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
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Out of the work comes the work.
John Cage
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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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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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...we make our lives by what we love.
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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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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
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To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
John Cage
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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.
John Cage