Frank Zappa Quotes - Page 5

Sometimes you got to get sick before you can feel better.

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

Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

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

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.

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.

You've got to be digging it while it's happening 'cause it just might be a one shot deal.

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 ?

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

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.

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

Jazz is the music of unemployment.

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

Two things are universal: Hydrogen and stupidity

[Lighting a cigarette] Well, I'm not here to impinge on anybody else's lifestyle. If I'm in a place where I know I'm going to harm somebody's health or somebody asks me to please not smoke, I just go outside and smoke. But I do resent the way the nonsmoking mentality has been imposed on the smoking minority. Because, first of all, in a democracy, minorities do have rights. And, second, the whole pitch about smoking has gone from being a health issue to a moral issue, and when they reduce something to a moral issue, it has no place in any kind of legislation, as far as I'm concerned.

who are the brain police?

The thing about drugs is this ... the Libertarians kind of have the right idea on this: Basically, their theory is that you own your own body, and the government should get out of your face. But, you also do not have the right to harm other people or to impinge on their rights or space. So, let's apply that to drugs . If you want to get wrecked, and you could afford it, and you have a place to do it where the results of your behavior can't harm another person, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be allowed to do it.

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

Music is always a commentary on society.

So many books, so little time.

It seems that the problem with government as an institution is uniformly bad, worldwide. It may be the ONLY thing that binds all nations together - the incompetence of all of their governments...The unions are the mafia, which is the CIA, which is the Catholic Church, which is the government, which is what's the difference? It's corrupt! It's the same guys pulling these strings, you know? One day he pulls the string and this lamp comes out, the next say he pulls the string and there's a missile coming out.

Tobacco is my favorite vegetable.

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.

A composer's job involves the decoration of fragments of time.

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