John Cage Quotes

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

Only chance to make the world a success for humanity lies in technology, grand possibility technolog...

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

Remove God from the world of ideas. Remove government, politics from society. Keep sex, humor, utili...

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with ...

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

Freedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.

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

I haven't been to a movie for three months of Sundays. I gather from what Carolyn reports that Holly...

Computer mistake in grade-giving resulted in academic failure of several brilliant students. After s...

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. ...

Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It's probably no more than ninet...

Power and profit structures're out of cahoots with current technology. Aware of new inventions, corp...

nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of mus...

Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?Are the peo...

All great art is a form of complaint

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

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

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

When we separate music from life we get art.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food t...

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

I went to a concert upstairs in Town Hall. The composer whose works were being performed had provide...

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, somethi...

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

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

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

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

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhe...

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

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

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse ...

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you mus...

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

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear which remains unsatisfied and even uneasy until...

We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable.

Why is it that children, taught the names of the months and the fact that there are twelve of them, ...

It would be better to have no school at all than the schools we now have. Encouraged, instead of fri...

Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind i...

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest on...