Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about John Cage
John Cage Quotes
65 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.
John Cage
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
John Cage
Source
Report...
I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it.
John Cage
Source
Report...
We are involved in a life that passes understanding, and our highest business is our daily life.
John Cage
Source
Report...
It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of 'culture.'
John Cage
Source
Report...
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
John Cage
Source
Report...
Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
John Cage
Source
Report...
Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
John Cage
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, 'You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.' I said, 'Well then, I'll beat my head against that wall.' I quite literally began hitting things, and developed a music of percussion that involved noises.
John Cage
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear I know nothing.
John Cage
Source
Report...
All God's religions... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
John Cage
Source
Report...
Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments. Every film studio has a library of "sound effects" recorded on film. With a film phonograph it is now possible to control the amplitude and frequency of any one of these sounds and to give to it rhythms within or beyond the reach of the imagination. Given four film phonographs, we can compose and perform a quartet for explosive motor, wind, heartbeat, and landslide.
John Cage
Source
Report...
Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want
John Cage
Source
Report...
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?
John Cage
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
John Cage
Source
Report...
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
1
2
3
4
Quote of the day
Your glass will not do you half so much service as a serious reflection on your own minds.
Mary Astell
John Cage
Born:
September 5, 1912
Died:
August 12, 1992
(aged 79)
Bio:
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist.
Most used words:
sound
,
music
,
time
,
film
,
life
,
musical
,
feeling
,
work
,
changing
,
hear
,
wall
,
thought
,
operation
,
love
,
talking
John Cage on Wikipedia
John Cage Official Website
Suggest an edit or a new quote
John Cage Quotes
John Cage Short Quotes
Quotes about John Cage
American Composer Quotes
Composer Quotes
20th-century Composer Quotes
Related People
Merce Cunningham
American Dancer
Morton Feldman
American Composer
Steve Reich
American Composer
Robert Rauschenberg
American Artist
Karlheinz Stockhausen
German Composer
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes