Quotes from John Cage

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.'

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

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.

Good music can act as a guide to good living.

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

We need not destroy the past. It is gone.

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.

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

When we separate music from life we get is art.

A 'mistake' is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is.

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

The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.

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.

Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.

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

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

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.

There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent to a gang bent on destruction.

We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.

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

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

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

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.

The function of Art is to imitate Nature in her manner of operation. Our understanding of her manner of operation&Rdquo changes according to advances in the sciences.