“In antiquity, life was nothing but silence. Noise was really not born before the 19th century, with the advent of machinery. Today noise reigns supreme over human sensibility.”
Source: 1910's, The Art of Noise', 1913, p. 4
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Luigi Russolo 11
Electronic music pioneer and Futurist painter 1885–1947Related quotes
“… it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise.”
Source: Let the Great World Spin
“Any action born of noise produces more noise, more confusion.”
Varanasi 2nd Public Talk (22 November 1964)
1960s
Context: You know, in the case of most of us, the mind is noisy, everlastingly chattering to itself, soliloquizing or chattering about something, or trying to talk to itself, to convince itself of something; it is always moving, noisy. And from that noise, we act. Any action born of noise produces more noise, more confusion. But if you have observed and learnt what it means to communicate, the difficulty of communication, the non-verbalization of the mind — that is, that communicates and receives communication—, then, as life is a movement, you will, in your action, move on naturally, freely, easily, without any effort, to that state of communion. And in that state of communion, if you enquire more deeply, you will find that you are not only in communion with nature, with the world, with everything about you, but also in communion with yourself.
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence.”
Una cosa, hasta no ser toda, es ruido, y todo, es silencio.
Voces (1943)
“Some say silence is golden, I choose noise.”
[Blake Lewis' profile, http://myspace.com/blakelewis, 2007-06-04, MySpace]
["What Are You Doing This Weekend?: Bshorty Farewell Party with KJ Sawka + Ra Scion + Joe Doria", http://www.seattleweekly.com/music/blogs/reverb/what_are_you_doing_this_weekend/, 2007-06-04, January 26, 2007, Seattle Weekly, Aja Pecknold]
On music
“He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence […]”
Pordenone http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29993/29993-h/29993-h.htm, IV (1886)
“Avoid the deafening noise of silence: incite thoughts by disfavouring action.”
Original: Evita l'assordante rumore del silenzio: incita i pensieri sfavorendo l'azione.
Source: prevale.net
quote in Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories, Viking, 1972, p. 231
Attributed from posthumous publications
Context: Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.