Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John Cage (American Composer)

John Cage (1912–92,) fully John Milton Cage, was an American composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher. His experimental approach profoundly influenced mid-20th-century music. He was also a lifelong collaboration and romantic partnership with choreographer Merce Cunningham, composing music for his dances and often serving as his music director.

Born in Los Angeles, Cage briefly attended Pomona College and then traveled in Europe for a time. He was a disciple of composers Richard Buhlig, Arnold Schoenberg, Adolph Weiss, and Henry Cowell. He studied Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s and was inspired to create aleatoric or chance-controlled music, starting in 1951.

Developing as an avant-garde composer, Cage not only used such experimental resources as indeterminacy, chance, electronics, and the ‘prepared piano’ (distorting the sound of the instrument with articles installed inside.) He produced pieces, such as 4′ 33″ (1952, silent completely) and Radio Music (1956, for one to eight radios) that challenge established notions about what music is.

Cage’s books include Silence (1961,) A Year from Monday (1967,) M (1973,) and Themes and Variations (1982.) He was also an authority on mushrooms.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by John Cage

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

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