Zitate und Sprüche von Frank Zappa

If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.

Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be.

The universe consists of 5% protons, 5% neutrons, 5% electrons and 85% morons.

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.

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

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

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.

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

It gets harder the more you know. Because the more you find out the uglier everything seems.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. Eventually within the next quarter of a century, the nostalgia cycles will be so close together that people will not be able to take a step without being nostalgic for the one they just took. At that point, everything stops. Death by Nostalgia.

Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

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

Music is the only religion that delivers the goods.

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

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.

Censoring what you say is one of the ways in which people who are not nice can take away your personal freedom.

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.

Environmental laws were not passed to protect our air and water, they were passed to get votes.

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.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

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.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

Without deviation progress is not possible.

One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.

That's L.A. They worship everything and they value nothing.

Welcome to a city where people trying to disappear aren't actually trying.

I lived in L.A. for a few months. It seemed like no one there had parents. Or if they did have parents, they would deny it.

What do Marylanders call their ex-girlfriends?
Old Bay.

They say money can't buy happiness, but it can buy a flight to Maryland - and that's pretty much the same thing.

Who's the more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?

I'm still a geek on the inside, that's the important thing.

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Being different isn't a bad thing. It means you're brave enough to be yourself.

In all of the world's books in all libraries in the universe, I couldn't find the words to describe what I feel about you.

If there's not enough coffee for everyone, there's coffee for no one.

Mankind invented the atomic bomb, but no mouse would ever construct a mousetrap.