John Cage

Everything I see is something I haven't memorized.

— John Cage

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

— John Cage

Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot,

— John Cage

Each moment presents what happens.

— John Cage

Music is a means of rapid transportation.

— John Cage

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

— John Cage

The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.

— John Cage

When we separate music from life we get art.

— John Cage

“Freedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.”

— John Cage

I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.

— John Cage

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

— John Cage

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

— John Cage

We are not committed to this or that. We are committed to the nothing in-between, whether we know it or not.

— John Cage

Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.

— John Cage

“If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.”

— John Cage

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

— John Cage

The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at…

— John Cage

All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am…

— John Cage

“Remove God from the world of ideas. Remove government, politics from society. Keep sex, humor, utilities. Let private property go.”

— John Cage

For myself and my own experience now, I don't really need any music. I have enough to listen to with just the…

— John Cage

“I want my writing to be as clear as water I can see through so that what I experienced is told without…

— John Cage

“...the important questions are answered by not liking only but disliking and accepting equally what one likes and dislikes. Otherwise there is…

— John Cage

The truth is that everything causes everything else. We do not speak therefore of one thing causing another. There are no secrets.…

— John Cage

Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not posses it) and…

— John Cage

After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, ‘In order to write music, you must have a feeling…

— John Cage

People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens…

— John Cage

A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not…

— John Cage

Paper should be edible, nutritious. Inks used for printing or writing should have delicious flavors. Magazines or newspapers read at breakfast should…

— John Cage

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better. I am convinced...that…

— John Cage

I never had a hat, never wore one, but recently was given a brown suede duck-hunting hat. The moment I put it…

— John Cage

Guy Nearing told us it's a good idea when hunting mushrooms to have a pleasant goal, a waterfall for instance, and, having…

— John Cage

I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to…

— John Cage

Every something is an echo of nothing

— John Cage

A meal without mushrooms is like a day without rain.

— John Cage

A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.

— John Cage

Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.

— John Cage

I don't need sound to talk to me,

— John Cage

Art is whatever you can get away with.

— John Cage

The world is teeming; anything can happen.

— John Cage

I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.

— John Cage