"I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings."
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Quote collection
John Cage quotes (page 5 of 8)
146 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it."
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"Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?"
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"Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation."
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"For myself and my own experience now, I don't really need any music. I have enough to listen to with just the sounds of the environment. I listen to the sounds of 6th avenue."
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"No one can have an idea once he starts really listening."
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"We are not committed to this or that. We are committed to the nothing in-between, whether we know it or not."
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"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."
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"Not one sound fears the silence that extinguishes it. And no silence exists that is not pregnant with sound."
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"In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions."
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"With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano, if you have at your disposal an exploded keyboard."
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"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."
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"There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound."
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"Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes."
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"To see, one must go beyond the imiagination and for that one must stand absolutely still as though at the center of a leap."
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"When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it."
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"It was at Harvard not quite forty years ago that I went into an anechoic [totally silent] chamber not expecting in that silent room to hear two sounds: one high, my nervous system in operation, one low, my blood in circulation. The reason I did not expect to hear those two sounds was that they were set into vibration without any intention on my part. That experience gave my life direction, the exploration of nonintention. No one else was doing that. I would do it for us. I did not know immediately what I was doing, nor, after all these years, have I found out much. I compose music."
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"All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again."
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"There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable."
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"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?"
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