John Cage Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• When we separate music from life we get is art.

  John Cage

  Art, Separation

  "Silence: Lectures and Writings".

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• We only hear what we listen for.

  John Cage

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• It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.

  John Cage

  Sleep, Play, Useless

  John Cage (2010). “M: Writings ’67–’72”, p.15, Wesleyan University Press

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• All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.

  John Cage

  Together Again, Religion, Able

  John Cage (2010). “M: Writings ’67–’72”, p.83, Wesleyan University Press

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• Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression "free as a bird," Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, "You know? They're not free: they're fighting over bits of food.

  John Cage

  Fighting, Artist, Expression

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.165, Wesleyan University Press

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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.

  John Cage

  Leaving, Rooms, Quantity

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• Everything we do is music." (Classical Composer)(From: 4'33")

  John Cage

  Composer, Classical Composers

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• There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent
  to a gang bent on destruction.

  John Cage

  People, Orchestra, Gang

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• Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

  John Cage

  Sound And Music, Silence, Trying

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.22, Wesleyan University Press

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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.

  John Cage

  Sound, Needs, Environment

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• In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.

  John Cage

  Wall, Cases

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.161, Wesleyan University Press

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• Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.

  John Cage

  Soul, Operations, Music Is

  Pierre Boulez, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, John Cage, Robert Samuels (1995). “The Boulez-Cage Correspondence”, p.38, Cambridge University Press

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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.

  John Cage

  Writing, Lunch, Should Have

  John Cage (2010). “M: Writings ’67–’72”, p.115, Wesleyan University Press

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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.

  John Cage

  Piano, Numbers, Musician

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• Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?

  John Cage

  School, Passing By, Musical

  Silence (1961)

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

  John Cage

  Mistake, Book, Reading

  John Cage (2010). “M: Writings ’67–’72”, p.61, Wesleyan University Press

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• If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.

  John Cage

  Challenges, Possibility, Shows

  John Cage, Richard Kostelanetz (1993). “John Cage, writer: previously uncollected pieces”, Amadeus Press

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• Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.

  John Cage

  People, Enough

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• One need not fear for the future of music.

  John Cage

  Needs

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• The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.

  John Cage

  Mind, Tables, Turns

  John Cage (2011). “Silence: Lectures and Writings, 50th Anniversary Edition”, Wesleyan University Press

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

  John Cage

  Art, Theatre, Cases

  John Cage (1961). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.174, Wesleyan University Press

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• Everything I see is something I haven't memorized.

  John Cage

  Havens

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• A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.

  John Cage

  Views, Sound, Doe

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.28, Wesleyan University Press

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• When I went to the analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting, he said, 'I'll be able to fix you so that you'll write much more music than you do now.' I said, 'Good heavens! I already write too much, it seems to me.' That promise of his put me off.

  John Cage

  Writing, Heaven, Promise

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.27, Wesleyan University Press

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• A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.

  John Cage

  Music, Resurrection, Finished Work

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.78, Wesleyan University Press

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