John Cage Quotes

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.

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.’

When I went to the analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting, he said, 'I'll be able to fix you so that you'll write much more music than you do now.' I said, 'Good heavens! I already write too much, it seems to me.' That promise of his put me off.

All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.

Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?

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

In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.

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

It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.

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

For myself and my own experience now, I don't really need any music. I have enough to listen to with just the sounds of the environment. I listen to the sounds of 6th avenue.

The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.

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.

Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want

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.

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

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.

One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, 'This end is more important than the other.' After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink.

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?

Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.

Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.

If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.

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.

When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.

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.

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

Not one sound fears the silence that extinguishes it. And no silence exists that is not pregnant with sound.

Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should be eaten for lunch. Instead of throwing one's mail in the waste-basket, it should be saved for the dinner guests.

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.

My favorite piece [piece of music] is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.

We only hear what we listen for.

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

I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.

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.

If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.

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.'