Frank Zappa Quotes

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

There are more love songs than anything else.

If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

So many books, so little time.

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

A drug is neither moral nor immoral -- it's a chemical compound.

The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.

The computer can't tell you the emotional story.

It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.

Music is always a commentary on society.

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline.

It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.

The manner in which Americans consume music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

You can't be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline -- it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.

There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.

I searched for years I found no love. I'm sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.

I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.

Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

Do we really want to know how Michael Jackson makes his music? No.

We want to understand why he needs the bones of the Elephant Man -- and, until he tells us, it doesn't make too much difference whether or not he really is bad.

Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny.

You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

The price of meat has just gone up and your old lady has just gone down.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.