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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.
Listen
Hear

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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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If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.
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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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Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
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A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.
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Art is whatever you can get away with.
John Cage
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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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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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When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.
John Cage
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Out of the work comes the work.
John Cage
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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.
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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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
John Cage
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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.
John Cage
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Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
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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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?
John Cage
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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
John Cage
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My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.
John Cage