After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, 'In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.

— John Cage

All great art is a form of complaint

— John Cage

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

— John Cage

Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living

— John Cage

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

— John Cage

Combine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.

— John Cage

Computer mistake in grade-giving resulted in academic failure of several brilliant students. After some years the mistake was discovered. Letter was sent to each student inviting him to resume his studies. Each replied he was getting along very well without education.

— John Cage

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.

— John Cage

Freedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.

— John Cage

Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants.

— John Cage