Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.
John CageRead
If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
Interpretation
Being selective about what you appreciate can limit your experiences.
John Cage's quote suggests that cultivating a preference for certain 'musical' sounds can lead to a narrow perspective on the world. Just as developing an ego can restrict one's openness to diverse experiences, a refined taste in music can result in a refusal to acknowledge the value in non-musical sounds, thereby limiting one's overall life experiences and understanding.
In practice
During a lecture on the importance of open-mindedness in the arts.
Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.
Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.
I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
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.
Observation and thinking are the two points of departure for all the spiritual striving of man, insofar as he is conscious of such striving. The workings of common sense, as well as the most complicated scientific researches, rest on these two fundamental pillars of our spirit.
Now I’m just standing here on the conveyor. Along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn’t lurch or groan like most of us. Her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her. That she doesn’t lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her.
The true aim of our Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, and vigils, and prayer, and almsgiving, and every good deed done for Christ's sake, they are only means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God.
Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
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