John Cage Quotes
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It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
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I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
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We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
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In: 'The Future of Music: Credo' (1937); in: 'Silence: lectures and writings by Cage, John', Publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, 4/SILENCE
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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
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I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, 'You have to invent it.' When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons, and events that have influenced my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me.
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I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.
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Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.
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Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
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I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored.
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I can't speak or write German, but I'am overjoyed because I have bought one of your pictures. Now it is in me. I write music. You are my teacher.
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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.
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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?
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We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.
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The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
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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.
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If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.
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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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The composer (organizer of sound) will be faced not only with the entire field of sound but also with the entire field of time. The 'frame' or fraction of a second, following established film technique, will probably be the basic unit in the measurement of time. No rhythm will be beyond the composer's reach.
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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.'