John Cage

"There is poetry in everything, if you know where to look."

"People often say that YOU can't teach an old dog new tricks. But music proves that wrong constantly."

"The empty space is never empty; it is full of possibility."

"Disagreement produces life."

"Most people work to live, but the idea is to live to work."

"Art should be a vehicle for awakening the senses."

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

"The future is constantly being shaped by your current thoughts and actions."

"We live in a time which is spiritually impoverished but technologically advanced."

"To sober and quiet the mind makes it susceptible to extraordinary possibilities."

"Error is gate to discovery."

"One could describe the history of his life as an endeavor to compose one's own best works."

"Music is the silence between the notes."

"Not understanding something is an asset, not a liability."

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas."

"Theater takes place all the time, wherever one is."

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence is an act of revolution."

"There's no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear."

"I'd like to eliminate the difference between the audience and the artist."

"The avant-garde is not that something is removed, it is rather that something is added."

"We are not trying to make environmental music, we are environmental music."

"Life is not something that can be conveyed, it must be lived."

"To stimulate real conversation and real interaction, we need silence."

"The job of the composer is to observe life itself."

"Everything we want is already within us; we just need to recognize it."

"Accepting what is teaches us how to act."

"We don't need to acquire knowledge; we need to remember."

"Creation is the province of the young."

"The way to creativity is not through following rules but through understanding them first."

"People tend to be afraid of ideas that threaten their established worlds."