Quotes from John Cage

The reason we life black people isn't because they're black. We like them because they're not as grey as we are.

I haven't been to a movie for three months of Sundays. I gather from what Carolyn reports that Hollywood now produces false entertainment: unmitigated violence on the screen; snickering, laughter in the audience.

We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable.

Now we have come to the end of the part about structure. However, it occurs to me to say more about structure.

Composing's one thing, performing's another, listening's a third. What can they have to do with one another?

Not the perception of the proportion of things outside of us but the experience of identification with whatever's outside of us (this is obviously a physical impossibility ; that's why it's a mental responsibility).

for we have found that by excluding we grow thin inside even though we may have an enormous bank account outside.

I nearly left this earth a few minutes ago — ecstasy — word from you. Pretty soon I'll write music for you.

I have attempted briefly here to set forth a view of the arts which does not separate them from the rest of life, but rather confuses the difference between Art and Life.

they come different and the same with each it is different and the same with each the absence of love is different with each the absence of love is the same

Technological errors made by government, industry [DDT, ABM, SST, CIA, etc.] are those of children, who, even thought they don't know what the score is, go on playing pre-technological games of power and profit.

Wi?cej za pomoc? mniej.

Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It's probably no more than ninety-nine people who don't know what they are doing. They're involved in high finance. Fascinating form of gambling.

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.

Nuda plus uwaga = zaczyna by? ciekawie.

Each day his eyes and ears were open and empty to see and hear the world he lived in. Music, he said, is continuous; only listening is intermittent. John Cage, 1979, reflecting on Henry David Thoreau's solo sojourn in Walden Woods, 1845-47.

Her playing which had been superb became merely correct. It was necessary to suggest a certain sloppiness, the playing of something that hadn't been written. Computer-made music-synthesized Blue Moon- presented same problem. Random elements introduced.

When a composer feels a responsibility to make, rather than accept, he eliminates from the area of possibility all events that do not suggest that at that point in time vogue of profundity, for he takes himself seriously, wishes to be considered great, and he thereby diminishes his love and increases his fear and concern about what people will think.

Growing fast in sawdust

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

The best government is no government at all.

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.

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

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.