Where does beauty begin and where does it end? It ends where the artist begins.
—John Cage
Topics: Beauty
It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
—John Cage
Topics: Reality, Opportunities
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.”
—John Cage
Topics: Music
I could not accept the academic idea that the purpose of music was communication, because I noticed that when I conscientiously wrote something sad, people and critics were often apt to laugh. I determined to give up composition unless I could find a better reason for doing it than communication. I found this answer from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian singer and tabla player: The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences. I also found in the writings of Ananda K. Coomaraswammy that the responsibility of the artist is to imitate nature in her manner of operation. I became less disturbed and went back to work.
—John Cage
Topics: Music
Ideas are one thing, and what happens is another.
—John Cage
Topics: Procrastination, Getting Going, Inaction
Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way…What we can’t do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent.
—John Cage
Topics: Music
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
—John Cage
Topics: Failures, Mistakes
We are involved in a life that passes understanding: our highest business is our daily life.
—John Cage
Topics: Value of a Day, Time Management
We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
—John Cage
Topics: Past, Past and Present
To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
—John Cage
Topics: Courage, Difficulty
If someone says can’t, that shows you what to do.
—John Cage
Topics: Determination, Challenges, One liners
The world is no longer a romantic place. Some of its people still are however, and therein lies the promise. Don’t let the world win.
—John Cage
Topics: Romance
An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he’ll arrive before death overtakes him.
—John Cage
Topics: Art
The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn’t stand the sight of the audience.
—John Cage
Topics: Audiences
We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.
—John Cage
Topics: Independence
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
—John Cage
We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn’t speak or talk like a human being, that doesn’t know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
—John Cage
Topics: Music
I like what the future holds. I don’t like thinking about the past.
—John Cage
Topics: Thinking
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Frank Zappa American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer
- Gian Carlo Menotti Italian-born American Composer
- Claude Debussy French Composer
- Igor Stravinsky Russian-born American Composer
- Stephen Sondheim American Musician
- Aaron Copland American Composer
- Ned Rorem American Composer
- Lukas Foss German-American Composer
- Jean Sibelius Finnish Composer
- Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
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