"Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens."
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Quote collection
John Cage quotes (page 3 of 8)
146 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I am trying to check my habits of seeing, to counter them for the sake of greater freshness. I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing."
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"Theatre takes place all the time - wherever one is - and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case."
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"We're breaking all of the rules, even our own rules, and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities."
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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."
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"My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard"
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"Art is whatever you can get away with."
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"Music is a means of rapid transportation."
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"I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
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"Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one's mail in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests."
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"The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation."
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"All great art is a form of complaint"
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"When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic - here on Sixth Avenue, for instance - I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound... I don’t need sound to talk to me."
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"Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot."
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"Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss."
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"Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way...What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent."
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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."
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"Every something is an echo of nothing"
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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."
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"A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is."
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