John Cage

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

It was at Harvard not quite forty years ago that I went into an anechoic [totally silent] chamber not expecting in that silent room to hear two sounds: one high, my nervous system in operation, one low, my blood in circulation. The reason I did not expect to hear those two sounds was that they were set into vibration without any intention on my part. That experience gave my life direction, the exploration of nonintention. No one else was doing that. I would do it for us. I did not know immediately what I was doing, nor, after all these years, have I found out much. I compose music. Yes, but how? I gave up making choices. In their place I put the -asking of questions. The answers come from the mechanism, not the wisdom of the I Ching, the most ancient of all books: tossing three coins six times yielding numbers between 1 and 64.
-John Cage, 1990

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
-John Cage

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

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