Quote

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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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.
Music
Hearing
Going
Turned
Long
Window
Like
Knew
Stop
Looking
Permanently
Away
Indians
Didn
Landscape

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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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.
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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.
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Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
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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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All great art is a form of complaint
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I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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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.
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Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want
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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
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Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
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There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.
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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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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
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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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My work became an exploration of non-intention.
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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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