“What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.”

as quoted in "Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, Music", January, 1996; ISBN 0819563110
1990s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you'…" by John Cage?

John Cage43

American avant-garde composer 1912–1992

Related quotes

“What is the argument on the other side? Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand still whilst the rest of the world goes on; and that will be bad for both.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Packer v. Packer [1954] P. 15 at 22.
Judgments

“I would never say "I'm straight, I'm bisexual, I'm gay." I feel like I will fall in love with a human being for who they are. I'm not afraid to say I've been attracted to a woman before and I've kissed girls before and been in love with them before. I've never really had a girlfriend or anything and I would never say I'm anything, really. I don't have an identity in that way.”

Kate Nash (1987) English pop singer and actor

Source: [Bendix, Trish, Kate Nash: "I would never say I’m straight. I don’t have an identity in that way.", https://www.afterellen.com/more/76790-kate-nash-i-would-never-say-im-straight-i-dont-have-an-identity-in-that-way, After Ellen, 18 July 2010, 13 November 2013]

“You see, dream-lover of a lady, what shakes me to the core
Is the thought as you caress me, you've done this all before
I think about the future with me out and others in
Will I, too, have disappeared like I've never ever been?”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wonder What Happened to Him
Song lyrics, Dance Band on the Titanic (1977)

“[W]hen you get to Rome you have two other rules to learn: never assume that what you see is what is; never believe that what you're told is the whole truth. It's only when you've grasped that — and the Romans know you've grasped it — that you begin to win respect and make progress.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Cardinal Francis Spellman in Book 1. London: Mandarin, 1993, p. 67
The Lovers (1993)

“People decide what you're like before they even get to know you”

Celeste Ng book Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Source: Everything I Never Told You

“Quiet Pride:
There has never been a day when I have not been proud of you, I said to my daughter, though some days I'm louder about other stuff so it's easy to miss that.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically?”

Edward Sapir (1884–1939) American linguist and anthropologist

In a letter dated August 1, 1918
Context: Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically? It's disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after all, isn't it? Great simplifications are in store for us. … It seems to me that only now that is American linguistics becoming really interesting, at least in its ethnological bearings.

“If you have been to college, so much the worse for you. You'll have to unlearn all you learned before you can get right down to human nature, and unlearnin’ takes a lot of time. Some men can never forget what they learned at college. p. 25”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 6, To Hold Your District: Study Human Nature and Act Accordin’

“I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)
Context: I aint got all that many regrets. I could imagine lots of things that you might think would make a man happier. I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.

“If you you're in the United States, sometimes you can feel lazy and think we're so big we don't have to really know anything about other people.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at YSEALI Town Hall https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/07/remarks-president-obama-yseali-town-hall (7 September 2016) <br class="br">2016

“What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Cage43

Related quotes

Related topics