John Cage famous quotes

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

#Life #Music #Space

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Change

Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.
-- John Cage

Good music can act as a guide to good living.
-- John Cage

#Guides

I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.
-- John Cage

We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
-- John Cage

#Music #Past #Needs

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

#Thinking #Irritating

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

#Wall #Writing #Order

My favorite piece of music is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.
-- John Cage

#Pieces #Quiet #My Favorite

The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
-- John Cage

#Listening #Facts #Composing

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
-- John Cage

#Poetry #Poetic #Realizing

Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
-- John Cage

#Sound #Excellent #Heard

Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.
-- John Cage

#Order #Mind #Desire

I am trying to check my habits of seeing, to counter them for the sake of greater freshness. I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.
-- John Cage

#Trying #Sake #Habit

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

#Music #Cutting #Ego

It is not futile to do what we do. We wake up with energy and we do something. And we make, of course, failures and we make mistakes, but we sometimes get glimpses of what we might do next.
-- John Cage

#Mistake #Might #Next

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

#Ideas

We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.
-- John Cage

#Home

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

#Curiosity #Judgment #Awareness

I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.
-- John Cage

#Running #Reading #Book

Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
-- John Cage

#School #Musical #Truck

Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
-- John Cage

#Art #Mind #Purpose

Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
-- John Cage

#Losing

Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
-- John Cage

#Carpe Diem #Thinking #Enjoy

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

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
-- John Cage

#Consistency #Inconsistency

All great art is a form of complaint
-- John Cage

#Art #Form #Complaints

Every something is an echo of nothing
-- John Cage

#Echoes

The attitude I take is that everyday life is more interesting than forms of celebration, when we become aware of it. That when is when our intentions go down to zero. Then suddenly you notice that the world is magical.
-- John Cage

#Zero #Attitude #Interesting

Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
-- John Cage

#Art #Helping

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

#Sorrow #Mirth #Heroic

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.
-- John Cage

#Beauty #Beautiful #Reality

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.
-- John Cage

#Inspirational #Music #Two

Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
-- John Cage

#Soul #Operations #Music Is

I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.
-- John Cage

#Believe #Musical #Use

Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.
-- John Cage

#Finding Yourself #Cages

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

#Mean #Listening #Entertainment

In the dark, all cats are black.
-- John Cage

#Cat #Dark #Black

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

#School #People #Musical

Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and thus need not fear its loss.
-- John Cage

#Loss #Poetry #Needs

People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.
-- John Cage

#Art #Inspiration #People

Music is a means of rapid transportation.
-- John Cage

#Music #Mean #Rapids

When I hear what we call ‘music,’ it seems to me that someone is talking.  And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships.  But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic — here on Sixth Avenue, for instance — I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking.  I have the feeling that sound is acting.  And I love the activity of sound I don’t need sound to talk to me.
-- John Cage

#Ideas #Talking #Feelings

There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.
-- John Cage

#Laughter #Mean #Order