110+ Frank Zappa Quotes On Censorship, Music And Death

Frank Zappa was an American musician, composer, and singer-songwriter. He was known for his experimental and innovative music, which blended elements of jazz, rock, classical, and avant-garde styles. He was also a political activist and was highly critical of the US government and the music industry. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Frank Zappa on censorship, life, music.

Top 10 Frank Zappa Quotes

1. The universe consists of 5% protons, 5% neutrons, 5% electrons and 85% morons.
2. A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.
3. The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life.
4. 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.
5. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
6. The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be.
10. If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

Frank Zappa Image Quotes

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. — Frank Zappa

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

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

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

Without deviance from normality, there can be no progress. — Frank Zappa

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

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

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

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

Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not. — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa Short Quotes

• There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
• Without deviance from normality, there can be no progress.
• Watch out where the Huskies go And don't you eat that yellow snow
• The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.
• I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?
• Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.
• Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not.
• Look here brother, who you jivin' with that cosmik debris?
• I'm the devil's advocate. We have our own worshipers.
• To me absurdity is the only reality

Frank Zappa Quotes About Life

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. — Frank Zappa

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

Love of my life, I love you so. Love of my life, don't ever go. — Frank Zappa

Do your job and do it right, life's a ball, TV tonight. — Frank Zappa

I don't want to spend my life explaining myself. You either get it, or you don't. — Frank Zappa

Stuff up the cracks, turn on the gas, I'm gonna take my life. — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa Quotes About Music

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

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another. — Frank Zappa

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

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

Modern music is people who can't think signing artists who can't write songs to make records for people who can't hear. — Frank Zappa

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

If classical music is the state of the art, then the arts are in a sad state. — Frank Zappa

Conducting" is when you draw "designs" in the nowhere-with a stick, or with your hands-which are interpreted as "instructional messages" by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing. — Frank Zappa

Believe it or not, there are places in the world where music is important. There are places in the world where all the arts are a matter of national pride. — Frank Zappa

The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse. — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa Quotes About Politics

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

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. — Frank Zappa

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. — Frank Zappa

Roller-skates and disco are a lot of fun, I'm much too young and stupid to operate a gun. — Frank Zappa

The NRA, with the fingers on the triggers when they kneel and pray. — Frank Zappa

Just be glad you don't live in one of those little countries where at this very moment, music is severely restricted, or as it is in Iran, totally illegal. — Frank Zappa

Basically I'm in the idea business -- whether it's a musical idea or a spoken idea ... If you wind up with a political system that wants to put idea men out of business, then you have worry on your hands. — Frank Zappa

Journalism is kind of scary and of it we should be wary. — Frank Zappa

All that we got here is American made. It's a little bit cheesy, but it's nicely displayed. — Frank Zappa

Environmental laws were not passed to protect our air and water, they were passed to get votes. — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa Quotes About Education

Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read. — Frank Zappa

My school spirit is at an all time low, I'm losing my status at the school. — Frank Zappa

My English teacher, he's like, he's like Mr. Bu-fu. — Frank Zappa

Guitar playing, as currently understood, has more to do with sports than it does to do with music. It's an Olympic challenge type of situation. The challenges are in the realm of speed, redundancy, choreography, and grooming... ...clouds of educated gnat-notes. — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa Quotes About People

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. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

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

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? — Frank Zappa

You know, people are basically shitty. It's when they prove it over and over again that it gets obnoxious. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

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

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

Beware of the fish people, they are the true enemy. — Frank Zappa

Censoring what you say is one of the ways in which people who are not nice can take away your personal freedom. — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa Quotes About Rock

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

Out on a 30 day tour, you got nothing, but groupies and promoters to love you. — Frank Zappa

Rock music was never written for or performed for conservative tastes. — Frank Zappa

Classical musicians go to the conservatories, rock´n roll musicians go to the garages. — Frank Zappa

My guitar wants to kill your mama. — Frank Zappa

These girls wouldn't let just anybody spew on their vital parts, they wanted a guy from a group with a big hit song on the charts. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

The typical rock fan is not smart enough to know when he is being dumped on. — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa Quotes About Love

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

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer. — Frank Zappa

If you really love guitar, you're going to spend every waking hour stroking the thing. — Frank Zappa

I think love lyrics have contributed to the general aura of bad mental health in America. — Frank Zappa

I detest 'love lyrics.' I think one of the causes of bad mental health in the United States is that people have been raised on 'love lyrics. — Frank Zappa

If lyrics make people do things, how come we don't love each other? — Frank Zappa

I hit you and I beat you and I told you that I love you. — Frank Zappa

Wowie zowie, love me do. Wowie zowie, and I'll love you, too. — Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Frank Zappa

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. — Frank Zappa

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

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. — Frank Zappa

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? — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

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

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. — Frank Zappa

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

Without deviance from normality, there can be no progress. — Frank Zappa

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

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

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. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

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

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. — Frank Zappa

The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows. — Frank Zappa

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

Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

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

The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents — because they have a tame child-creature in their house. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

Don't eat the yellow snow. — Frank Zappa

I think that if a person doesn't feel cynical then they're out of phase with the 20th century. Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization - you can't just swallow it whole. — Frank Zappa

Science is moving closer to weaponry, and Art is moving closer to commercialism. And never the twain shall meet. — Frank Zappa

The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar; now that's my idea of a good time. — Frank Zappa

If you pick up a guitar and it says, 'take me, I'm yours,' then that's the one for you — Frank Zappa

There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it. — Frank Zappa

Tighten my headband for an extra rush. — Frank Zappa

On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole. — Frank Zappa

Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn't mean you've reached them. With reading comprehension being what it is in the U. S., you can safely toss that one out the window. If you want to judge by the listening habits of people who buy records, the first thing they do is put it on and talk over it. — Frank Zappa

I have an important message to deliver to all the cute people all over the world. If you're out there and you're cute, maybe you're beautiful. I just want to tell you somethin' — there's more of us UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS than you are, hey-y, so watch out. — Frank Zappa

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. — Frank Zappa

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. — Frank Zappa

The crux of the biscuit is: If it entertains you, fine. Enjoy it. If it doesn't, then blow it out your ass. I do it to amuse myself. If I like it, I release it. If somebody else likes it, that's a bonus. — Frank Zappa

Left me here to cry alone with a bottle of juice and pork chop bone. — Frank Zappa

Two things are universal: Hydrogen and stupidity — Frank Zappa

If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine - but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good - and CARES about any of it - to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working. — Frank Zappa

Don't mind your make-up, you'd better make your mind up. — Frank Zappa

Ram it up your poop chute. — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we have tolerated the last eight years? — Frank Zappa

The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese. — Frank Zappa

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality. — Frank Zappa

A true Zen saying: "Nothing is what I want. — Frank Zappa

Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe. — Frank Zappa

Scientology, how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion ? — Frank Zappa

Children are naive-they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble. — Frank Zappa

Since I didn't have any kind of formal training, it didn't make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin' Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels ... , or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music. — Frank Zappa

The whole music business in the United States is based on numbers, based on unit sales and not on quality. It's not based on beauty, it's based on hype and it's based on cocaine. It's based on giving presents of large packages of dollars to play records on the air. — Frank Zappa

You can't escape the puking sphinx. — Frank Zappa

So many books, so little time. — Frank Zappa

You is what you am, a cow don't make ham. — Frank Zappa

When they dumped all these people out of the insane asylums they didn't all go sleep in the street. Some of them moved into suburbia, and started writing postcards to the FCC. — Frank Zappa

It's a despicable thing to share your personal inner torment for money. — Frank Zappa

Don't go to bed with any woman crazier than you are. — Frank Zappa

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

Anything Anytime Anyplace For No Reason At All (or AAAFNRAA) — Frank Zappa

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. — Frank Zappa

Producing satire is kind of hopeless because of the literacy rate of the American public. — Frank Zappa

I enjoy irritating the people who enjoy being irritated. — Frank Zappa

The Very Big Stupid is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D department. — Frank Zappa

I don't think there's a problem. First of all, I don't think music turns people into social liabilities. Because you hear a lyric — Frank Zappa

On the Planet of Baritone women, they talk low. — Frank Zappa

Scientists believe that the universe is made of hydrogen because they claim it's the most plentiful ingredient. I claim that the most plentiful ingredient is stupidity. — Frank Zappa

Life Lessons by Frank Zappa

1. Life is too short to take things too seriously. Frank Zappa's music and lyrics often satirized the establishment and encouraged people to think for themselves and question authority.
2. Being creative and taking risks can lead to great rewards. Zappa was a prolific composer and musician and was never afraid to experiment and push boundaries.
3. It is important to stay true to yourself and your values. Zappa was a vocal advocate of free speech and often spoke out against censorship.