42 Quotes & Sayings By John Cage

All great art is a form of complaint John Cage

Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living John Cage

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience. John Cage

The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience. John Cage

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? What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question? John Cage

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord. John Cage

Nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by playing a piece of musicour ears are now in excellent condition. John Cage

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, 'In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall. John Cage

Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants. John Cage

Remove God from the world of ideas. Remove government, politics from society. Keep sex, humor, utilities. Let private property go. John Cage

It would be better to have no school at all than the schools we now have. Encouraged, instead of frightened, children could learn several languages before reaching age of four, at that age engaging in the invention of their own languages. Play'd be play instead of being, as now, release of repressed anger. John Cage

Why is it that children, taught the names of the months and the fact that there are twelve of them, don't ask why the ninth is called the seventh (September), the tenth called the eight (October), the eleventh called the ninth (November), the twelfth called the tenth (December)? John Cage

Only chance to make the world a success for humanity lies in technology, grand possibility technology provides to do more with less, and indiscriminately for everyone. Return to nature as nature pre-technologically was, attractive and possible as it still in some places is, can only work for some of us. John Cage

Power and profit structures're out of cahoots with current technology. Aware of new inventions, corporations put them aside, waiting for competitive reasons until they're obliged to use new gimmicks. John Cage

I went to a concert upstairs in Town Hall. The composer whose works were being performed had provided program notes. One of these notes was to the effect that there is too much pain in the world. After the concert I was walking along with the composer and he was telling me how the performances had not been quite up to snuff. So I said, "Well, I enjoyed the music, but I didn't agree with that program note about there being too much pain in the world." He said, "What? Don't you think there's enough?" I said, "I think there's just the right amount. John Cage

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness. John Cage

I haven't been to a movie for three months of Sundays. I gather from what Carolyn reports that Hollywood now produces false entertainment: unmitigated violence on the screen; snickering, laughter in the audience. John Cage

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another. John Cage

If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not. John Cage

We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable. John Cage

Sleep's what we need. It produces an emptiness in us into which sooner or later energies flow. John Cage

Computer mistake in grade-giving resulted in academic failure of several brilliant students. After some years the mistake was discovered. Letter was sent to each student inviting him to resume his studies. Each replied he was getting along very well without education. John Cage

Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It's probably no more than ninety-nine people who don't know what they are doing. They're involved in high finance. Fascinating form of gambling. John Cage

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

I discovered that those who seldom dwell on their emotions know better than anyone else just what an emotion is. John Cage

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

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities, ' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die! John Cage

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

To accept whatever comes regardless of the consequences is to be unafraid. John Cage

An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality. John Cage

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another. John Cage

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear which remains unsatisfied and even uneasy until it hears something better. I am convinced...that provided the ear be at length made amends there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed. John Cage

We are involved in a life that passes understanding: our highest business is our daily life. John Cage

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. John Cage

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life. John Cage

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

When we separate music from life we get art. John Cage

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry. John Cage