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Century Quote by John Cage

“If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.” quote by John Cage — Download Open image

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

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Century Ifs Inspirational music Instruments Meaningful Music Music is Music making Nineteenth century Organization Piano Reserved Sacred Sound Substitutes Term

More by John Cage

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…

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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…

So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art.…

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“...the important questions are answered by not liking only but disliking and accepting equally what one likes and dislikes. Otherwise there is no access…

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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.

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

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To see, one must go beyond the imiagination and for that one must stand absolutely still as though at the center of a leap.

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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

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Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake…

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

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

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People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.

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Explore all 186 John Cage quotes

More Century quotes

I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.

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[The Dalai Lama] told me some years ago, "I've made every concession to China, and I've been as open and tolerant as I could, and still things get worse in Tibet." If you look at it from one point of view, as he himself says, his monastic position of forbearance and nonviolence hasn't reaped any benefits. And yet, he's thinking…

Anybody looking for a quiet life has picked the wrong century to born in.

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The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

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In the nineteenth century some parts of the world were unexplored, but there was almost no restriction on travel.:; Up to 1914 you did not need a passport for any country except Russia.:; The European emigrant, if he could scrape together a few pounds for the passage, simply set sail for America or Australia, and when he got there no…

Talented people can predict with great accuracy what's about to happen just a tiny bit ahead of their competitors. It might be two seconds…

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The world's history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian philosopher and historian - the humble listener - there has been…

James A. Garfield

The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the…

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At no time in the past century has public distrust of the government been so broadly distributed across the political spectrum, as it is…

Phil Zimmermann

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While husbands and lovers in the stories are of all kinds, ranging from sympathetic to disgusting, women are invariably deceivers: inconstant, unscrupulous, quarrelsome, querulous,…

Barbara Tuchman

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The young people today are the 21st century.

Martin Scorsese

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The wisdom of our actions in the first three years of peace will determine the course of world history for half a century.

Henry A. Wallace

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Browse all 5,361 Century quotes