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

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

It’s useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless...

The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning

I haven’t been to a movie for three months of Sundays. I gather from what Carolyn reports that Hollywood now produces false entertainment: unmitigated violence on the screen; snickering, laughter in the audience.

It would be better to have no school at all than the schools we now have. Encouraged, instead of frightened, children could learn several languages before reaching age of four, at that age engaging in...

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of...

nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by playing a piece of musicour ears are now in excellent condition.

We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.

Sleep’s what we need. It produces an emptiness in us into which sooner or later energies flow.

Remove God from the world of ideas. Remove government, politics from society. Keep sex, humor, utilities. Let private property go.

Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation

Corporate Responsibility; Environmental Preservation; Consumer Protection; Sex & Race Discrimination (they must mean Sex and Race Liberation).

If someone says ‘can’t,’ that shows you what to do

We, the garden of technology. We, undecidable.

All great art is a form of complaint

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.

In our forestspart divineand makes her heart palpitatewild and tame are one. What a delicious Sound!

I have nothing to say And I am saying it And that is poetry

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

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

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

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...

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

So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we’re overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We’ve gotten to the point of burning food. When will we...

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....

We need not destroy the past. It is gone.

Only chance to make the world a success for humanity lies in technology, grand possibility technology provides to do more with less, and indiscriminately for everyone. Return to nature as nature pre-technologically was, attractive and...

If someone says can’t, that shows you what to do.

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...

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

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.

I went to a concert upstairs in Town Hall. The composer whose works were being performed had provided program notes. One of these notes was to the effect that there is too much pain in...

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.

I discovered that those who seldom dwell on their emotions know better than anyone else just what an emotion is.

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...

The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

Why is it that children, taught the names of the months and the fact that there are twelve of them, don’t ask why the ninth is called the seventh (September), the tenth called the eight...

To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.

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

The emotions – love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust – are in the audience.

Everyone is in the best seat

Technological errors made by government, industry [DDT, ABM, SST, CIA, etc.] are those of children, who, even thought they don’t know what the score is, go on playing pre-technological games of power and profit.

Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It’s probably no more than ninety-nine people who don’t know what they are doing. They’re involved in high finance. Fascinating form of gambling.

Put ’em who threaten possessions and power together with ’em who offend our tastes in sex and dope. Those who’re touched, put ’em in asylums. Pack off old ones to ‘senior communities,’ nursing homes. Our...

The world is teeming; anything can happen.

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

Power and profit structures’re out of cahoots with current technology. Aware of new inventions, corporations put them aside, waiting for competitive reasons until they’re obliged to use new gimmicks.

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.