Read how to open files in File Open Database.

frank zappa Quotes

Frank Zappa Quotes

Birth Date: 1940-12-21 (Saturday, December 21st, 1940)
Date of Death: 1993-12-04 (Saturday, December 4th, 1993)

 

frank zappa life timeline

The Montreux Casino in Switzerland is set ablaze by someone wielding a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert; the incident would be noted in the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water".Saturday, December 4th, 1971
Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testify at U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music.Thursday, September 19th, 1985

Quotes

    • Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the bible. Who wins?
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country with a WORKING first amendment.
    • A wise man once said, never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment.
    • The idea of people sticking things up their nose in order to be groovy is really repulsive.
    • My theory is that music is good, it's the only religion that delivers the goods. And anybody who wants to hear any kind of music is entitled to hear that music because it's good for you - it makes you feel good. If you like it, go for it. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean anything - it's a matter of personal taste.
    • I've been in discos around the world. I've made a very thorough sociological study of discos ... As long as people want to get laid, there will be something like a disco - because that's the main social function of a discoteque.
    • Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the inquisition.
    • When God created Republicans, he gave up on everything else.
    • 'After all, he [God] wrote this book here, and in the book it says he made us all to be just like him! So if we're dumb, then God is dumb - and maybe even a little ugly on the side.'
    • I like to watch the news, because I don't like people very much and when you watch the news ... if you ever had an idea that people were really terrible, you could watch the news and know that you're right.
    • For the record, folks; I never took a shit on stage and the closest I ever came to eating shit anywhere was at a Holiday Inn buffet in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1973.
    • The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.
    • 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.
    • I don't give a fuck if they remember me at all.
    • I'm probably more famous for sitting on the toilet than for anything else that I do.
    • I'll tell you what classical music is - for those of you who don't know. Classical music is this music that was written by a bunch of dead people a long time ago. And it's formula music, the same as top forty music is formula music. In order to have a piece be classical, it has to conform to academic standards that were the current norms of that day and age ... I think that people are entitled to be amused, and entertained. If they see deviations from this classical norm, it's probably good for their mental health.
    • The word (revolution) seems to conjure up images of sort of a modern day version of peasants going in to the street with their pitchforks. They go after the bad guy who lives in a big house someplace on the hill, and we're gonna give it to the workers, ya know. That's not the kind of revolution I had in mind. Well I thought that it might be nice if it was handled in a more modern and efficient way, without people getting slaughtered in the street... It's a matter of infiltration.
    • The most important thing to do in your life, is to not interfere with somebody else's life.
    • 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.
    • 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...
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Beauty is a pair of shoes that makes you wanna die.
    • Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.
    • Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
    • The biggest threat to America today is not communism. It's moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that's happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe ... 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, and if that code happens to be very, very right wing, almost toward Attila the Hun...
    • 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.
    • Gail has said in interviews that one of the things that makes our relationship work is the fact that we hardly ever get to talk to each other.
    • The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consistent and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese.
    • 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.
    • Rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, in order to provide articles for people who can't read.
    • 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.
    • There are three things that smell of fish. One of them is fish. The other two are growing on you!
    • Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.
    • The essence of Christianity is told to 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.
    • 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?
    • May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face.
    • If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT.
    • I think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such an absurdity to take anything really serious ... I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously: I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen, I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what's the story here? Being alive is so weird.
    • Tobacco is my favorite vegetable.
    • 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.
    • Let's not be too rough on our own ignorance, it's what makes America great!
    • Hey, you know something people? I'm not black, but there's a whole lots a times I wish I could say I'm not white.
    • 'Don't eat the yellow snow.'
    • Why Should I Smile When I'm Sitting Here With You?
    • The Ultimate Rule ought to be:'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchen; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty' The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of_____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.
    • To me - absurdity is the only reality.
    • The '60s was really stupid... It was a type of merchandising, Americans had this hideous weakness, they had this desire to be OK, fun guys and gals, and they haven't come to terms with the reality of the situation: we were not created equal. Some people can do carpentry, some people can do mathematics, some people are brain surgeons and some people are winos and that's the way it is, and we're not all the same. This concept of one world-ism, everything blended and smoothed out to this mediocre norm that everybody downgrades themselves to be is stupid. The '60s was merchandised to the public at large... My pet theory about the '60s is that there is a sinister plot behind it... The lessons learnt in the '60s about merchandising stupidity to the American public on a large scale have been used over and over again since that time.
    • There is no hell. There is only France.
    • You're an asshole! You're an asshole! That's right! You're an asshole! You're an asshole! Yes yes!
    • A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's not open.
    • The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
    • The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
    • Arf, she said.
    • Love is not the end of the world, love is the beginning of the world. Many people write about the subject of love as if that was some ultimate attainment to aspire to :you can have love but you can go beyond that, into realms that are even more interesting.
    • The poodle bites, the poodle chews it.
    • Look here brother, who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris?
    • You have just destroyed one model XQJ-37 nuclear powered pansexual roto-plooker....and you're gonna have to pay for it.
    • The meek shall inherit nothing.
    • 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.
    • Is that a real poncho, I mean is that a Mexican poncho or a Sears poncho?
    • Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short, cloth neck ornament, currently in resurgence.
    • Help I'm a rock!
    • Speed: It will turn you into your parents.
    • The man in the White House ... He's got a conscience as black as sin! There's just one thing I wanna know - How'd that asshole ever manage to get in?'
    • We're involved in sort of a low key war against apathy. Most of what we do is designed to annoy people to the point where they might just for a second question enough of their environment to do something about it. As long as they don't feel their environment, they don't worry about it - they're not gonna do anything to change it. Something's gotta be done before America scarfs up the world and shits on it. (1968 - BBC television)
    • Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex.
    • 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 PhDs and everything but they don't know anything. And what do they listen to? Certainly not my records.
    • 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)
    • If we can't be free, at least we can be cheap
    • Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
    • The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!'
    • 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.
    • Go ahead Senator, I already hold you in contempt.
    • ...if a million more agree, this ain't no great society, as it applies to you and me, our country isn't free, if all that you could ever be is just a lousy janitor, unless your uncle owns a store...
    • I used to think that the only music was love music. I was wrong.
    • If people stop copying my music, I should start to worry.
    • There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.
    • Music is the most physically inspiring of all the Arts.
    • 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.
    • I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?
    • All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
    • Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
    • Modern music is a sick puppy.
    • The disgusting stink of a too loud electric guitar; now that's my idea of a good time.
    • Now I know where all the rancid people who used to go to the Fillmore East have moved
    • 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.
    • The other factor that people forget about the southern region is the amount of inter-marriage that has already occurred there, and so there are certain genetic defects come to the fore when you have a large inter-marriage population. That means regression .... And in fact Utah is another state, which is basically owned by the Mormon church, which also has a lot of inter-marriage and because this type of inter-marriage there is a large proportion of blind people in Utah. That's why when you go across the street, instead of just a stop light that you can see, they have stop lights that make a coo-coo noise to tell you when to cross the street- that's true!
    • Tax the FUCK out of the churches!
    • 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 in a variety of different things. Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence.
    • 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.
    • So, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, if you go for all these fairy tales, that 'evil' woman convinced the man to eat the apple, but the apple came from the Tree of Knowledge. And the punishment that was then handed down, the woman gets to bleed and the guy's got to go to work, is the result of a man desiring, because his woman suggested that it would be a good idea, that he get all the knowledge that was supposedly the property and domain of God. So, that right away sets up Christianity as an anti-intellectual religion. You never want to be that smart. If you're a woman, it's going to be running down your leg, and if you're a guy, you're going to be in the salt mines for the rest of your life. So, just be a dumb fuck and you'll all go to heaven. That's the subtext of Christianity.
    • People make a lot of fuss about my kids having such supposedly 'strange names'. But the fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it is the last name that is going to get them in trouble. (The Real Frank Zappa Book)
    • Consider for a moment the beauty of the name 'Ralph'.
    • Because I wanted to!
    • frank zappa

Quotes by Famous People

Who Were Also Born On December 21stWho Also Died On December 4th
Kiefer Sutherland
Anke Engelke
Ray Romano
Frank Zappa
Anthony Powell
Thomas Bracken
Benjamin Disraeli
Leopold von Ranke
Frank Zappa
John Gay
Thomas Hobbes
Cardinal Richelieu
Omar Khayyam

Copyright © www.quotesby.net