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John Cage Quotes

John Cage quote from classy quote

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

~ John Cage

John Cage Ideas Inspirational

Freedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.

~ John Cage

John Cage Comedy Emptiness Freedom

The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.

~ John Cage

John Cage Emotion Music

The world is teeming, anything can happen.

~ John Cage

John Cage Music

Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?

~ John Cage

John Cage Music

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

~ John Cage

John Cage Music Zen

nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by playing a piece of musicour ears are now in excellent condition.

~ John Cage

John Cage Music

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony. I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, 'In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.

~ John Cage

John Cage Art Music

Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants.

~ John Cage

John Cage Buckminster Fuller Human Nature Margaret Mead Mind Nature Philosophy

Remove God from the world of ideas. Remove government, politics from society. Keep sex, humor, utilities. Let private property go.

~ John Cage

John Cage Government Humor Politics Private Property Religion Sex Society Utilities

It would be better to have no school at all than the schools we now have. Encouraged, instead of frightened, children could learn several languages before reaching age of four, at that age engaging in the invention of their own languages. Play'd be play instead of being, as now, release of repressed anger.

~ John Cage

John Cage Children Education Education System Educational Philosophy Fear Play School Reform

Why is it that children, taught the names of the months and the fact that there are twelve of them, don't ask why the ninth is called the seventh (September), the tenth called the eight (October), the eleventh called the ninth (November), the twelfth called the tenth (December)?

~ John Cage

John Cage Children Education System Months

Only chance to make the world a success for humanity lies in technology, grand possibility technology provides to do more with less, and indiscriminately for everyone. Return to nature as nature pre-technologically was, attractive and possible as it still in some places is, can only work for some of us.

~ John Cage

John Cage Nature Off The Grid Society Survival Technology Transhumanism

Power and profit structures're out of cahoots with current technology. Aware of new inventions, corporations put them aside, waiting for competitive reasons until they're obliged to use new gimmicks.

~ John Cage

John Cage Corporations Power Profit Society Technology

I went to a concert upstairs in Town Hall. The composer whose works were being performed had provided program notes. One of these notes was to the effect that there is too much pain in the world. After the concert I was walking along with the composer and he was telling me how the performances had not been quite up to snuff. So I said, Well, I enjoyed the music, but I didn't agree with that program note about there being too much pain in the world. He said, What? Don't you think there's enough? I said, I think there's just the right amount.

~ John Cage

John Cage Cage Pain Silence

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

~ John Cage

John Cage Awareness Curiosity Value

I haven't been to a movie for three months of Sundays. I gather from what Carolyn reports that Hollywood now produces false entertainment: unmitigated violence on the screen; snickering, laughter in the audience.

~ John Cage

John Cage Attitude Entertainment Films Hollywood Hollywood Culture Movies Violence

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.

~ John Cage

John Cage Nursery Nursing Home Old Age Social Change Youth

If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.

~ John Cage

John Cage Acceptance Avant Garde Modernism Novelty Populism

We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable.

~ John Cage

John Cage Garden John Cage Technology Undecidable We

Sleep's what we need. It produces an emptiness in us into which sooner or later energies flow.

~ John Cage

John Cage Energy Energy Medicine Energy Of The Universe Sleep Sleep Deprivation

Computer mistake in grade-giving resulted in academic failure of several brilliant students. After some years the mistake was discovered. Letter was sent to each student inviting him to resume his studies. Each replied he was getting along very well without education.

~ John Cage

John Cage College Education System Mistakes

Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It's probably no more than ninety-nine people who don't know what they are doing. They're involved in high finance. Fascinating form of gambling.

~ John Cage

John Cage 1 Percent Capitalism Economics Finance Humor Financial Markets One Percent Power Elite Price System

So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?

~ John Cage

John Cage Art Deconstructionism Music Revolution

I discovered that those who seldom dwell on their emotions know better than anyone else just what an emotion is.

~ John Cage

John Cage Emotion John Cage Zen

College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.

~ John Cage

John Cage College Conformity Education System

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die!

~ John Cage

John Cage Army Cultural Differences Cultural Revolution Elder Care Prison Senior Citizen Social Commentary Social Justice

Theatre takes place all the time wherever one is and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case.

~ John Cage

John Cage Art Artist

An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.

~ John Cage

John Cage Failures Mistakes

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

~ John Cage

John Cage Getting Going

We are involved in a life that passes understanding: our highest business is our daily life.

~ John Cage

John Cage One Day

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.

~ John Cage

John Cage Life Daily Understanding

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.

~ John Cage

John Cage Time Silence See

When we separate music from life we get art.

~ John Cage

John Cage Life Art Separate

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.

~ John Cage

John Cage I Am Nothing Saying
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