49 Top Quotes By John Cage, The Great Composer
If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
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.
I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it.
Every something is an echo of nothing
Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
In the dark, all cats are black.
There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.
All great art is a form of complaint
Everything we do is music." (Classical Composer)(From: 4'33")
It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
The world is teeming; anything can happen.
Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.
There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accordance with nature, in her manner of operation.
Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living
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?
A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.
Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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.
There is nothing we need to do that isn't dangerous.
Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
Nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of music nothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of music nothing is accomplished by playing a piece of music our ears are now in excellent condition.
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all.
Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.
