Frank Zappa Quotes

Don't forget to vote.

If we can't be free at least we can be cheap.

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.

One and one is eleven.

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.

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.

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.

Elvis has left the building to climb up that heavenly stair. So what if he looks like a wart-hog in heat?

To me absurdity is the only reality

With a tongue like a cow, she could make you go wow.

Without deviation progress is not possible.

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

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

Moving to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon.

All your children are poor unfortunate victims of systems beyond their control

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

We was on our way to fame, got matching suits and Beatle boots.

I proceeded to take that mitten full of the deadly yellow snow crystals and rub it all into his beady little eyes with a vigorous circular motion.

Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?

Music is the only religion that delivers the goods.

I'm more interested in melodic things. I think the biggest challenge when you go to play a solo is trying to invent a melody on the spot.

The most abundant element in the Universe is stupidity

Some people ... SOME PEOPLE like cupcakes better (but) I for one, could care LESS for them!

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

Alright. Let's get realistic now. You know and I know that the function of that number was just to provide some sort of warm-up trash before we do something HEAVY. Something a little bit harder to listen to, but which is probably better for you in the LONG RUN. The item in this instance, which will be better for you in the LONG RUN, and if we only had a little more space up here we could make it visual for you, is "Some Ballet Music," which we've played at most of our concert series in Europe. Generally in halls where we had a little bit more space and Motorhead and Kansas could actually fling themselves across the stage, and give you their teenage interpretation of the art of The Ballet. I don't think it's too safe to do it here, maybe they can just hug each other a little bit and do some calisthenics in the middle of the stage.

I think the music of the Fifties is really good. I suspect it's much better musically than much of what's available now. Not in terms of production, but in terms of content.

I hit you and I beat you and I told you that I love you.

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

Two things are universal: Hydrogen and stupidity

Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.

Love lyrics have contributed to the general aura of bad mental health in America.

Rock music was never written for or performed for conservative tastes.

They's making it worse, the labor movement got the mafia curse.

Shut Up and Play your Guitar.

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.

Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.

Anything played wrong twice in a row is the beginning of an arrangement.

We could improve worldwide mental health if we acknowledged that parents can make you crazy.

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.

The language and concepts contained herein are guaranteed not to cause eternal torment in the place where the guy with the horns and pointed stick conducts his business

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. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

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.

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

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.

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. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?

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

Disco boy, no one understands, but thank the lord you still got hands.

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

So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there's no way you're gonna find out what it means.

What something is depends more on when it is than anything else.

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

There are only two things to remember. Number one ... Don't Stop, and number two ... Keep Going!

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.

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.

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

If we cannot be free, we can at least be cheap

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.

The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin'.

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

Let's not be too rough on our own ignorance, it's what makes America great.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

The plumber he says, never flush a tampon. This is great information, cost me half a weeks pay.

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 ?

Broken hearts are for assholes, are you an asshole?

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.

They tried to make me go to Catholic school, too. I lasted a very short time. When the penguin came after me with a ruler, I was out of there.

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

Most people don't bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom.

She is an office girl, her name is Betty. Her favorite group is Helen Reddy.

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

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.

Ever try to have a conversation with someone on drugs? It just doesn't work ...

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

May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face.

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'.

You're a young kid and you hear all those 'love lyrics', right? Your parents aren't telling you the truth about love, and you can't really learn about it in school. You're getting the bulk of your 'behaviour norms' mapped out for you in the lyrics to some dumb fucking love song. It's a subconscious training that creates desire for an imaginary situation which will never exist for you. People who buy into that mythology go through life feeling that they got cheated out of something.

What I think is very cynical about some rock and roll songs -- especially today -- is the way they say: "Let's make love." What the fuck kind of wussy says shit like that in the real world? You ought to be able to say "Let's go fuck", or at least "Let's go fill-in-the-blank" -- but you gotta say "Let's make love" in order to get on the radio. This creates a semantic corruption, by changing the context in which the word 'love' is used in the song.

When they get into drooling about love as a 'romantic concept' -- especially in the lyrics of sensitive singer/songwriter types -- that's another shove in the direction of bad mental health.

Fortunately, lyrics over the last five or six years have gotten to be less and less important, with 'art rock groups' and new wavers specializing in 'nonjudgemental' or 'purposely inconse

The more you can escape from how horrible things really are, the less it's going to bother you ... and then, the worse things get.

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.

You can't escape the puking sphinx.

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.

You are what you is, you is what you am, you ain't what you're not. So see what you got?

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

If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they'll murder you in your sleep.

Am I a boy or a lady, I don't know which?

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

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

Beware of the fish people, they are the true enemy.

My balls feel like a pair of maracas.

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.

Beauty is a pair of shoes that makes you wanna die.

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

I ain't the type for begging, I am not the type to plead. If she don't change those evil ways, I'm gonna make her bleed.

There is no hell. There is only France.

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

The closer you are, the brighter the flames in my heart.

People like to own things.

Ram it up your poop chute.

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

Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not.

Anyone who is disturbed by the idea of newts in a nightclub is potentially dangerous.

She use to knock me out until her face broke out.