Some Great Frank Zappa Quotes...

[shainhouse]

Here ya go:

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 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.

Tax the FUCK out of the churches!

-- Frank Zappa

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

-- Frank Zappa, speech to a pro-choice rally in Los Angeles around 1989-90

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.

-- Frank Zappa

I don't think there's a problem. First of all, I don't think music turns people into social liabilities. Because you hear a lyric -- there's no medical proof that a person hearing a lyric is going to act out the lyric. There's also no medical proof that if you hear any collection of vowels and consonants, that the hearing of that collection is going to send you to Hell.

-- Frank Zappa, interview, WRIF, 1985

It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right...

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

-- Frank Zappa, quoted from The Real Frank Zappa Book

Well, I believe that those energies and processes exist. I just don't think that they've been adequately described or adequately named yet, because people are too willing to make it all into something that supports a religious theory of one flavor or another. If you start defining these things in nuts-and-bolts scientific terms, people reject it because it's not fun, y'know. It takes some of the romance out of being dead ... because of people's desires to have eternal life and to extend their influence from beyond the grave ... all that Houdini type stuff ... but basically, I think when you're dead ... you're dead. It comes with the territory.

-- Frank Zappa, Society Pages No. 7, January 12, 1991, quoted from The Way I See It, Barry

There is no hell. There is only France.

-- Frank Zappa, You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore

The other factor that people forget about the southern region is the amount of intermarriage that has already occured there, and so there are certain genetic defects come to the fore when you have a large intermarriage 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 intermarriage. And because this type of intermarriage 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 coocoo noise to tell you when to cross the street -- that's true!

-- Frank Zappa, Arf Society interview, quoted from The Way I See It, Barry

Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.

-- Frank Zappa

The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. "You eat this apple, you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that."

-- Frank Zappa

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.

-- Frank Zappa, interview, Playboy, May 2, 1993

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.

-- Frank Zappa

Anybody hear the great news, today? Jimmy Swaggart under investigation! Oh Ja-eezus! One day every one of those cocksuckers will get caught! I understand in the case of Mr. Swaggart, that he claims that it was not multiple encounters with many prostitutes -- apparently, only one sweet young thing. And he did tell Cal Thomas of the Moral Majority that the sex act itself was not fully consumated. However he did admit to doing something por-no-graphic with the girl. Let's use our imaginations, ladies and gentlemen.

-- Frank Zappa, opening remarks to "Stink Foot" at the Make A Jazz Noise Here show, recorded in 1988

Get smart and I'll fuck you over -- sayeth The Lord.

-- Frank Zappa, regarding Christianity's perpetuation of ignorance as a way of life

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.

-- Frank Zappa, expressing his opinion on raising a child, saying that institutions such as schools and churches, which have the power to control and brainwash your child, are totally overrated and shouldn't always be recognized as a genuinely good thing

In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has -- to put it mildly -- a fatal design flaw.

From the time Mr. Developing Nation was forced to read The Little Red Book in exchange for a blob of rice, till the time he figured out that waiting in line for a loaf of pumpernickel was boring as fuck, took about three generations....

Decades of indoctrination, manipulation, censorship and KGB excursions haven't altered this fact: People want a piece of their own little Something-or-Other, and, if they don't get it, have a tendency to initiate counterrevolution.

-- Frank Zappa

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.

-- Frank Zappa

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.

-- Frank Zappa, Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock", 1985, after being asked by Tipper Gore if there was anything on TV he didn't allow his kids to watch

I think you should leave it up to the parent, because not all parents want to keep their children totally ignorant.

-- Frank Zappa, in response to a question from Senator Hollings

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

-- Frank Zappa, quoted from Whole Grains, an early 1970's book of quotations

Why doncha come on over to the house and I'll show 'em to ya?

-- Frank Zappa, on being asked by Sen. Paula Hawkins from Florida, "I'd like to see what kind of toys your children play with," at the Senate hearing on pornography in music

Consider for a moment any beauty in the name Ralph.

-- Frank Zappa, on being asked by Joan Rivers why he gave his children such odd names

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.

-- Frank Zappa, from The Real Frank Zappa Book

The last election just laid the foundation of the next 500 years of Dark Ages.

-- Frank Zappa, in 1981

Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we have tolerated the last eight years?

-- Frank Zappa, in 1988

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?

-- Frank Zappa, to a concert audience at the Rockpile, Toronto, May 1969

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

-- Frank Zappa, quoted from Cyber Nation's quotations section

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

-- Frank Zappa, 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

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

-- Frank Zappa, Statement to the Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock," 1985

The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?

-- Frank Zappa, Statement to the Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock," 1985

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.

-- Frank Zappa

Information doesn't kill you.

-- Frank Zappa, at the Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock", 1985 during an exchange with a Born Again Christian

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

-- Frank Zappa, to Mrs. Gore about parental advisory labels on album covers

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.

-- Frank Zappa, promotional postcard from Rykodisc

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

-- Frank Zappa, at one of his trials, responding to a prosecuting lawyer who had quoted some of his lyrics which pertained to newts in a nightclub, after which which the lawyer said he found this image disturbing

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

-- Frank Zappa, Waka/Jawaka

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.

-- Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book

Whatever you have to do to have a good time, let's get on with it, so long as it doesn't cause a murder.

-- Frank Zappa

So long as somebody gets a laugh out of it, what the fuck?

-- Frank Zappa, Guitar Player's "Mother of All Interviews" part 2

The crux of the biscuit is: If it entertains you, fine. Enjoy it. If it doesn't, then blow it out your ass. I do it to amuse myself. If I like it, I release it. If somebody else likes it, that's a bonus.

-- Frank Zappa, interview, Playboy, May 2, 1993

It's fucking great to be alive, ladies and gentlemen, and if you do not believe it is fucking great to be alive, you better go now, because this show will bring you down so much.

-- Frank Zappa, from Just Another Band From L.A.

The whole Universe is a large joke.

Everything in the Universe are just subdivisions of this joke.

So why take anything too serious.

-- Frank Zappa, in September, 1992, on SFB 3 when he gave an interview about the Yellow Shark

Well Mike, I'm abnormal.

-- Frank Zappa, on being asked by Mike Douglas (he appeared solo, playing guitar with recorded backup): "Your latest album is called Zoot Allures -- how do you come up with such names for your records?"

I never set out to be wierd. It was always the other people who called me wierd.

-- Frank Zappa, to The Baltimore Sun, October 12, 1986

Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on.

-- Frank Zappa, from The Real Frank Zappa Book

The Very Big Stupid is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D department.

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

He was in a quandary...being devoured by the swirling cesspool of his own steaming desires... uh.. the guy was a wreck

Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.

Nothing but the best for my dog.

THE VERY BIG STUPID is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D Department.

You drank beer, you played golf, you watched football - WE EVOLVED!

I'm not going to be Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled. I did inhale. I liked tobacco a lot better.

Information doesn't kill you...

-Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock", 1985 during an exchange with a Born Again Christian.

For my taste, these solos (of some 50s blues guitarists) are exemplary because what is being played seems honest and, in a musical way, a direct extension of the personality of the men who played them.

It's not pretty, also you can't dance to it.

It looks just like a Telefunken U-47!

Jazz is not dead...it just smells funny.

Where ever you're going, don't walk the first. If you do, people will think you know where you're going.

You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream. Who are the brain police?

I think you should leave it up to the parent, because not all parents want to keep their children totally ignorant.

A prune isn't really a vegetable...

CABBAGE is a vegetable...

I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...

Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe.

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.

I was writing all kinds of positive and negative canons and weird inverted this and retrograde that and getting as spaced-out mathematically as I could and I was going "Wait a minute (laughs), who cares about that stuff?" I had always liked rhythm and blues so here I was stuck between the slide rule and the gut bucket somewhere and I decided that I would opt for a third road someplace in between.

A mind is like a parachute. It doesnt work if it is not open.

When we talk about artistic freedom in this country We sometime lose sight of the fact that freedom is often dependent on adequate financing .

Here I stand hoping against hope that it's a chick with a low voice -- At a concert in Beloit, Wisconsin 1968 or 69 a guy in the audience yelled out, "Eat me Zappa".

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.

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

On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standars of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express CREATIVELY his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole.

I figure the odds be fifty-fifty I just might have some thing to say.

The worst aspect of `typical familyism' (as media-merchandised) is that it glorifies _involuntary_homogenization_.

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

There will never be a nuclear war; there's too much real estate involved.

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.

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.

It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralize the long-range effects of OUR NATIONAL STUPIDITY.

And all the rest of whom for which to whensonever of partially indeterminate bio-chemical degredation. Seek the path to the sudsy yellow nozzle of their foaming nocturnal parametric digital whole-wheat inter-faith geo-thermal terpsichorean ejectamenta.

The manner in which Americans "consume" music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie -- it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it was made.

Nuclear explosions under the Nevada desert?

What the fuck are we testing for?

We already know the shit blows up.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

The last election just laid the foundation of the next 500 years of Dark Ages

Thanks to our schools and political leadership, the U.S. has acquired an international reputation as the home of 250 million people dumb enough to buy 'The Wacky Wall-Walker.'

Now imagine a Moebius vortex inside a spherical constant, and you've got my cosmology.

Shoot low, they're riding Shetlands

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 keep your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

Stupidity has a certain charm -- ignorance does not.

In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say is "Mine!" A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say "Mine!" when you grow up, has -- to put it mildly -- a fatal design flaw.

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.

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.

Nobody looks good in brown lipstick

Decades of indoctrination, manipulation, censorship and KGB excursions haven't altered this fact: People want a piece of their own little Something-or-Other, and, if they don't get it, have a tendency to initiate counterrevolution.

If it sounds GOOD to YOU, it's bitchen; and if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty.

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

``Conducting'' is when you draw ``designs'' in the nowhere -- with your stick, or with your hands -- which are interpreted as ``instructional messages'' by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing.

Whatever you have to do to have a good time, let's get on with it, so long as it doesn't cause a murder

People who think of videos as an art form are probably the same people who think Cabbage Patch Dolls are a revolutionary form of soft sculpture.

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

Nobody looks good bent over. Especially to pick up a cheque.

[MarcO]

You know, I keep trying but I wish I could enjoy his music as much as I enjoy the man....

thanks for the post, Shain!

[bradm]

Hey, we can't really be dumb if we're following God's orders

He wrote this book here

And the book 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

-- "Dumb All Over" (from the "You Are What You Is" album)

You say your life's a bum deal

And your back's against the wall

Let me tell you

You ain't got not kind of "deal" at all

'Cause what they do

In Washington

They just takes care

Of number one

And number one ain't you

You ain't even number two

-- "The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing" (from the "You Are What You Is Album")

You're going out there to decorate time, and your weapon is a guitar.

-- from a CityTV interview, when asked about his approach to guitar solos

Without music to decorate it, time is just a series of boring production deadlines and waiting for bills to be paid.

-- from "The Real Frank Zappa Book"

Aloha,

Brad

[shainhouse]

He's a brilliant man, and I knew some people on here would enjoy his incite.

peace-

shain

[bradm]

quote:

---

Originally posted by shainhouse:

He's a brilliant man, and I knew some people on here would enjoy his

incite

.

---

I really hope that was an intentional pun, 'cause it's a beauty.

Aloha,

Brad

[shainhouse]

^^^

[Vermontdave]

That was great shainhouse. He was a true patriot. I wish he had gotten his keister/prostate checked a little more so that he might still be around to give his opinion and guitar solo to all of us. Peace

[shainhouse]

The good die young sometimes.

[Chewie]

quote:

---

Originally posted by MarcO:

You know, I keep trying but I wish I could enjoy his music as much as I enjoy the man....

---

not even peaches marco? that's one of my fave phish openers/covers

i admit he's (to quote the pimp in the box, van smack ) a lot like beer...nobody really likes it the first time...it's an acquired taste.

war hot rats...i'm out!