John Cage Quotes

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear which remains unsatisfied and even uneasy until it hears something better. I am convinced...that provided the ear be at length made amends there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.

To accept whatever comes regardless of the consequences is to be unafraid.

Theatre takes place all the time wherever one is and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case.

Put 'em who threaten possessions and power together with 'em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who're touched, put 'em in asylums. Pack off old ones to 'senior communities,' nursing homes. Our children? Keep'em prisoner, baby-sitter as warden. School? Good for fifteen to twenty years. Army afterward. Liberated, we live in prison. No this, no that. Kill us before we die!

College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.