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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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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
John Cage
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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
John Cage
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My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard
John Cage
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It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
John Cage
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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
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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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
John Cage
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Out of the work comes the work.
John Cage
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Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
John Cage
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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
John Cage
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Art is whatever you can get away with.
John Cage
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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.
John Cage
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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
John Cage
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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.
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.
John Cage
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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
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The function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation. Our understanding of her manner of operation&Rdquo changes according to advances in the sciences.
John Cage
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Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
John Cage
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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
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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.
John Cage