Frank Vincent Zappa was an American multi-instrumentalist musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity, and satire of American culture. Profoundly inspirational Frank Zappa quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Frank Zappa Quotes
lf you’re going to deal with reality, you’re going to have to make one big discovery: Reality is something that belongs to you as an individual. If you wanna grow up, which most people don’t, the thing to do is take responsibility for your own reality and deal with it on your own terms. Don’t expect that because you pay some money to somebody else or take a pledge or join a club or run down the street or wear a special bunch of clothes or play a certain sport or even drink Perrier water, it’s going to take care of everything for you. – Frank Zappa
Republican is fine, if you’re a millionaire. Democrats is fair, if all you own is what you wear. Neither of them’s really right, cause neither of them care. – Frank Zappa
Rock music was never written for or performed for conservative tastes. – 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
Elmore James only knew one lick, but you had the feeling that he meant it. – Frank Zappa
Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity. – Frank Zappa
Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read. – Frank Zappa
All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff…Basically what people want to hear is: I love you, you love me, the leaves turn brown, they fell off the trees, the wind is blowing, it got cold, you went away, my heart broke, you came back, and my heart was okay…Modern music is people who can’t think signing artists who can’t write songs to make records for people who can’t hear. Most people wouldn’t know good music if it came up and bit them on the ass…If lyrics make people do things, how come we don’t love each other? – Frank Zappa
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. – Frank Zappa
Anything Anytime Anyplace For No Reason At All (or AAAFNRAA) – 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
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
Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins? – Frank Zappa
The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow J on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine? – Frank Zappa
Yeah, I tell them to change the channel if they see some guy in a brown suit with a telephone number at the bottom of the screen asking for money. – Frank Zappa
A true Zen saying: Nothing is what I want. – Frank Zappa
The problem with drugs is that most of the people that use the drugs, use it as a license to be an asshole. – Frank Zappa
The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else’s life. – Frank Zappa
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
It’s better to have something to remember than anything to regret. – 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
I’m not going to be Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled. I did inhale. I liked tobacco a lot better. – Frank Zappa
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
I’m not black, but there’s a whole lot of times I wish I could say I’m not white. – Frank Zappa
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. – Frank Zappa
I wrote a song about dental floss, but did anyone’s teeth get cleaner? – Frank Zappa
I’m vile and perverted. I’m obsessed and deranged. I’ve existed for years but very little has changed. I’m the tool of the government and industry too. For I’m destined to rule and regulate you. You may think I’m pernicious, but you can’t look away. I’ll make you think I’m delicious with the stuff that I say. I’m the best you can get… have you guessed me yet? I’m the slime oozing out of your TV set. – Frank Zappa
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. – Frank Zappa
The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they’re property. – Frank Zappa
You don’t think I work 14 hours a day right now?! I mean, I still put in the hours, I still do the work. – Frank Zappa
I’ll give you a simple formula for straightening out the problems of the United States. First, you tax the churches. You take the tax off of capital gains and the tax off of savings. You decriminalize all and tax them same way as you do alcohol. You decriminalize. You make gambling legal. That will put the budget back on the road to recovery, and you’ll have plenty of tax revenue coming in for all of your social programs, and to run the army. – Frank Zappa
Organized religions by their very natures are misleading. – Frank Zappa
What something is depends more on when it is than anything else. – Frank Zappa
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. – Frank Zappa
I think love lyrics have contributed to the general aura of bad mental health in America. – Frank Zappa
A composer’s job involves the decoration of fragments of time. – Frank Zappa
Don’t forget to vote. – 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
My theory is that there is no word that you can say or noise that you can make with your mouth that is so horrible that it will send you to burn forever in that lake of fire! It’s not gonna happen. – 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
If we can’t be free at least we can be cheap. – Frank Zappa
Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be. – Frank Zappa
Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence. – 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
Your mind is totally controlled, it has been stuffed into my mold. And you will do as you are told, until the rights to you are sold. – Frank Zappa
You are what you is, you is what you am, you ain’t what you’re not. So, see what you got? – Frank Zappa
She lives in Mojave in a Winnebago. His name is Bobby, he looks like a potato. – Frank Zappa
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
Environmental laws were not passed to protect our air and water, they were passed to get votes. – Frank Zappa
Weedly-weedly-wee, make a face, hold your guitar like it’s your weenie, point it heavenward, and look like you’re really doing something. Then, you get a big ovation while the smoke bombs go off, and the motorized lights in your truss twirl around. – 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
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 whole Universe is a large joke. Everything in the Universe are just subdivisions of this joke. So why take anything too serious. – Frank Zappa
So many books, so little time. – Frank Zappa
The universe consists of 5% protons, 5% neutrons, 5% electrons and 85% morons. – Frank Zappa
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy. – Frank Zappa
Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons. – Frank Zappa
It’s fairly obvious, since Richard Nixon, that there is no such thing as a fair deal for any voter in the United States — You’re just not gonna get it. It’s a joke — the people that you vote for, they’re the next best thing to criminals. But of course, they have money for advertising campaigns that make them look a little bit better than they actually are. – 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
We live in a very special time right now. At no other time in history has there been such mass disillusionment in terms of reliance on governing functions. Most people don’t want to come to terms with that. It’s been proven over and over again that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, but most people don’t like to look at naked emperors. In the process of turning around to avert their eyes, they saw the discotheques and a few other things and latched onto them. – Frank Zappa
It gets harder the more you know. Because the more you find out the uglier everything seems. – Frank Zappa
Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world. There’s a world, you see which has people in it who believe a variety of different things. – Frank Zappa
You don’t dig me, I don’t understand what it is, I had my car reupholstered. – 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
The richest people in the world aren’t particularly smart or happy. And the happiest people in the world aren’t particularly smart or rich.… That leaves me making music. But we can’t talk about that. – 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
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
On the Planet of Baritone women, they talk low. – 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
People will always have the desire to make rock and roll records, and they’ll always have the desire to sell rock and roll records. Most of the people making these records do it because it is a business, and if someone says, you can’t do this, they won’t complain. They’ll just keep making records, but they’ll get blander and blander. There’ll still be rock and roll but compared to what it really could be or ought to be, I don’t think it’ll be all that terrific. – Frank Zappa
Moving to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon. – Frank Zappa
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open. – Frank Zappa
Of course, it’s contrived, but once you know how its contrived, you can understand the editorial viewpoint. CNN, for example, when you see where they’re really coming from, you can subtract their bias, and get some sort of facts. Sometimes the amount of bias that is imposed in these things is so laughable that it gives you an extra layer of entertainment. – Frank Zappa
Our big prize tonight is fifty American dollars to the girl with the most exciting mammalian protuberances. – Frank Zappa
It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralize the long-range effects of our national stupidity – Frank Zappa
I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country that has a working First Amendment. – Frank Zappa
The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse. – Frank Zappa
Who are the brain police? – Frank Zappa
I don’t want to spend my life explaining myself. You either get it, or you don’t. – Frank Zappa
Schools train people to be ignorant, with style. They give you the equipment that you need to be a functional ignoramus. American schools* do not equip you to deal with things like logic; they don’t give you the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any medium or format; and they prepare you to be a usable victim for military-industrial complex that needs manpower. – Frank Zappa
Beware of the fish people, they are the true enemy. – Frank Zappa
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. – Frank Zappa
Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on. – Frank Zappa
Music is the only religion that delivers the goods. – 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
Their stupidity does not amaze me, it’s when they’re smart that amazes me. It’s baffling whenever you find someone who’s smart – incredible. Soon you’ll have zoos for such things. – 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
Don’t eat the yellow snow. – Frank Zappa
I don’t want to see any religious people in public office because they’re working for another boss. – Frank Zappa
Producing satire is kind of hopeless because of the literacy rate of the American public. – Frank Zappa
There are only two things to remember. Number one…Don’t Stop, and number two…Keep Going! – Frank Zappa
Consider for a moment any beauty in the name Ralph. – Frank Zappa
It’s a despicable thing to share your personal inner torment for money. – 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
Most people don’t bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom. – Frank Zappa
To me absurdity is the only reality. – Frank Zappa
I think you should leave it up to the parent, because not all parents want to keep their children totally ignorant. – Frank Zappa
We pretend to be a free society, and we pretend to be an adult society, but if you look at the facts, our news is just as contrived, and controlled as Pravda! – Frank Zappa
My balls feel like a pair of maracas. – Frank Zappa
Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass. – 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
Whatever you have to do to have a good time, let’s get on with it, so long as it doesn’t cause a murder. – 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
I believe that people have a right to decide their own destinies; people own themselves. I also believe that, in a democracy, government exists because (and only so long as) individual citizens give it a temporary license to exist, in exchange for a promise that it will behave itself. In a democracy, you own the government. It doesn’t own you. – 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
Music is always a commentary on society. – Frank Zappa
When God created Republicans, he gave up on everything else. – Frank Zappa
Catholic girls with tiny little mustaches. – 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
A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians. – Frank Zappa
Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff. – 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
I never have no trouble with my rubber girl. – Frank Zappa
If lyrics make people do things, how come we don’t love each other? – Frank Zappa
You know, people are basically shitty. – Frank Zappa
Kid’s heads are filled with so many nonfacts that when they get out of school, they’re totally unprepared to do anything. They can’t read, they can’t write, they can’t think. Talk about child abuse. The U.S. school system as a whole qualifies. – Frank Zappa
One size does not fit all. – Frank Zappa
Stupidity has a certain charm – ignorance does not. – Frank Zappa
I write the music I like. If other people like it, fine, they can go buy the albums. And if they don’t like it, there’s always Michael Jackson for them to listen to. – Frank Zappa
Jazz is the music of unemployment. – Frank Zappa
The most abundant element in the Universe is stupidity. – Frank Zappa
There’s no reason to assume that my idea of what’s better would really be better. I resent it when other people try to inflict their ideas of betterness on me. I don’t think they know. And I can’t see any authority on the horizon that’s got any answers that seem worthwhile. Most of the things that are suggested are probably detrimental to your mental health. – Frank Zappa
