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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art is a product of hard work rather than just inspiration.
John Cage highlights the misconception that artists are solely reliant on inspiration to create their work. He asserts that the practice and discipline involved in their art form take precedence over moments of inspiration, suggesting that dedication and effort are fundamental to artistic achievement.
Themes
ArtInspirationWorkCreativityDedication
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at an art workshop discussing the importance of dedication over inspiration.
More from John Cage
All quotes βWhich is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
John CageRead
There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that donβt have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Donβt have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.
John CageRead
I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.
John CageRead
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
John CageRead
Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.
John CageRead
Similar quotes
Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.
Maurice ChevalierRead
Time, which despoils castles, enriches verses.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try to make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether she can read or write or not and whether she is alive or dead.
Ernest HemingwayRead
You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.
Steven PressfieldRead
I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.
Tracy ChapmanRead
We are no longer the same after hearing certain sounds, and this is more the case when we hear organized sounds, sounds organized by another human being: music.
Karlheinz StockhausenRead