Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993) was an American rock musician.

Verified

• "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..."
  • Source: Packard Goose
• "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. Forget I mentioned it. This song has no message. Rise for the flag salute. "
  • Source: Zappa's liner notes for Freak Out
• "Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny."
  • Source: Be-Bop Tango
• "The biggest threat to America is not communism it is moving America towards a fascist theocracy and everything the Reagan administration has been doing is steering us right down that path. When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view."
  • Source: 1986 appearance on Crossfire debating censorship

Attributed

• "If people stop copying my music, I should start to worry."

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

• "Arf, she said."

• "The poodle bites, the poodle chews it."

• "Look here brother, who you jivin' with that Cosmic Debris?"

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

• "I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?" Senate Hearing on Porn Rock, 1985, in response to Tipper Gore's allegations that music incites people towards deviant behavior, or influences their behavior in general

• "In the fight between you and the world, back the world."

• "The Quality of Our Lives (if we think of this matter in terms of "How much of what we individually consider to be Beautiful are we able to experience every day?") seems an irrelevant matter, now that all decisions regarding the creation and distribution of Works of Art must first pass under the LIMBO BAR (a.k.a "The Bottom Line"), along with things like Taste and The Public Interest, all tied like a tin can to the wagging tail of the sacred Prime Rate Poodle. The aforementioned FESTERING POOT is coming your way at a theatre or drive-in near you. It wakes you up every morning as it droozles out of your digital clock radio. An ARTS COUNCIL somewhere is getting a special batch ready with little tuxedos on it so you can think it's precious."

• "A lot of things wrong with society today are directly attributable to the fact that the people who make the laws are sexually maladjusted."

• "It pays to make the U.S. school system a crock of shit because the dumber the people are that come out, the easier it is to draft them, make them into docile consumers, or, you know, mongo employees. There are plenty of yuppies out there with absolutely nothing upstairs. Graduate airheads with Ph.Ds and everything but they don't know anything. And what do they listen to? Certainly not MY records."

• "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."

• "Music is the most physically inspiring of all the Arts." - From a keynote address to the American Society of University Composers

• "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 theatre." (1977)

• "Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." (1978)

• "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."

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

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

• "If we can't be free, at least we can be cheap"

• "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

• "A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's closed."

• "Children are naïve -- 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."

• "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."