Frank Zappa Quotes

Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put to the test, usually find it to be an 'inconvenience.' We have opted instead for an authoritarian system disguised as a Democracy. We pay through the nose for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us around, and then wonder how all those assholes got in there.

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.

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

The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life.

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

Republican is fine, if your a millionaire.

Democrats is fair, if all you own is what you wear. Neither of them's really right, cause neither of them care.

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

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

Power will be maintained by the groovy guy or gal who gets the most media coverage for his sleaze. Naturally, his friends in various businesses will do okay, too.

Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned--I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.

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.

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

Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be.

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.

A wise man once said, never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment.

Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair.

Does that make you a woman?' Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?

I would say that today, dishonesty is the rule, and honesty the exception.

It could be, statistically, that more people are honest than dishonest, but the few that really control things are not honest, and that tips the balance.

A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

As far as rearing children goes, the basic idea I try to keep in mind is that a child is a person. Just because they happen to be a little shorter than you doesn't mean they are dumber than you.

There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.

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

The bassoon is one of my favorite instruments.

It has a medieval aroma, like the days when everything used to sound like that. Some people crave baseball...I find this unfathomable, but I can easily understand why a person could get excited about playing the bassoon.

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.

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

Without deviance from normality, there can be no progress.

Watch out where the Huskies go And don't you eat that yellow snow

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

The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.

It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong.

The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right... Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

There are more love songs than anything else.

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

The most important thing in art is The Frame.

For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively - because without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins.

My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.

I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. You eat this apple, you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that.

The computer can't tell you the emotional story.

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

Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not.

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

Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.

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

Look here brother, who you jivin' with that cosmik debris?

America was founded by the refuse of the religious fanatics of England, these undesirable elements that came over on the Mayflower. Ignorant, religious fanatics who land here and abuse the Indians.

Let’s be realistic about this, the guitar can be the single most blasphemous device on the face of the earth. That’s why I like it . . . The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar: now that’s my idea of a good time.

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.

You know, people are basically shitty.

It's when they prove it over and over again that it gets obnoxious.

I'm the devil's advocate. We have our own worshipers.

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.

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

I don't want to see any religious people in public office because they're working for another boss.

It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralise the long-range effects of our national stupidity

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