I write what I like to write. Those who like to listen to it, listen to it. And the ones who don’t, watch football and drink beer, jog, go to discos and so forth. I never claimed to be a man for all season

I write the music I like. If other people like it, fine, they can go buy the albums. And if they don’t like it, there’s always Michael Jackson for them to listen to

Music is the only religion that delivers the goods

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

So, if music is the best, what is music? Anything can be music, but it doesn’t become music until someone wills it to be music, and the audience listening to it decides to perceive it as music

In the United States especially, musicians are generally regarded as sort of useless adjuncts to society, unless they do something creative, like write a Coca-Cola jingle, and then they’ll be accepted. But musicians usually are regarded as sort of the scum of the earth, and so if you want to be a musician, you just have to realize before you start that nobody is really going to care.

Music is always a commentary on society

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

No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.

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

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

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

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

Certification from one source or another seems to be the most important thing to people all over the world. A piece of paper from a school that says you’re smart, a pat on the head from your parents that says you’re good or some reinforcement from your peers that makes you think what you’re doing is worthwhile. People are just waiting around to get certified

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

As long as you’re just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you’re gonna be alright. But if you go beyond that then you’re gonna have these grave doubts that give you stomach problems, headaches make you want to go out and do something else. So, I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out.

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

Behind each breakaway movement is a breakaway demagogue who will set up his breakaway demagogue government

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

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 in mildly – a fatal design flaw

We live in a very special time right now. At no other time in history has there been such mass disillusionment in terms of reliance on governing functions. Most people don’t want to come to terms with that. It’s been proven over and over again that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, but most people don’t like to look at naked emperors. In the process of turning around to avert their eyes, they saw the discotheques and a few other things and latched onto them

We pretend to be a free society, and we pretend to be an adult society, but if you look at the facts, our news is just as contrived, and controlled as Pravda

I believe that people have a right to decide their own destinies; people own themselves. I also believe that, in a democracy, government exists because (and only so long as) individual citizens give it a temporary license to exist, in exchange for a promise that it will behave itself. In a democracy, you own the government. It doesn’t own you

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

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.

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.

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 it is out of phase with human nature. Are we going to wake up one day to find this statement equally true when applied to the concept of Western democracy?

Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex

This country’s been around for a couple of hundred years, and we think we’re hot shit. We don’t even realize that other countries have thousands of years of history and culture, and they’re proud of it. And when we deal on an international level, you know, with foreign policy and stuff like that, and we try and go in as a big American, strong country and all that stuff, they must laugh up their sleeves at us because we are nothing. We are culturally nothing. We mean nothing. We’re only interested in the bottom line.

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

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

Unbind your mind, there is no time

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 a variety of different things.

I think it’s really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It’s such an absurdity to take anything really seriously… 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

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

Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn’t mean you’ve reached them. With reading comprehension being what it is in the U. S., you can safely toss that one out the window. If you want to judge by the listening habits of people who buy records, the first thing they do is put it on and talk over it.

It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralise the long-range effects of our national stupidity.

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.

Two things are universal: Hydrogen and stupidity

I think that if a person doesn’t feel cynical then they’re out of phase with the 20th century. Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization – you can’t just swallow it whole.

Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they’re smart that amazes me. It’s baffling whenever you find someone who’s smart – incredible. Soon you’ll have zoos for such things

As far as rearing children goes, the basic idea I try to keep in mind is that a child is a person. Just because they happen to be a little shorter than you doesn’t mean they are dumber than you

I would say that today, dishonesty is the rule, and honesty the exception. It could be, statistically, that more people are honest than dishonest, but the few that really control things are not honest, and that tips the balance

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

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

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

There’s no reason to assume that my idea of what’s better would really be better. I resent it when other people try to inflict their ideas of betterness on me. I don’t think they know. And I can’t see any authority on the horizon that’s got any answers that seem worthwhile. Most of the things that are suggested are probably detrimental to your mental health

What something is depends more on when it is than anything else.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

If you’re going to deal with reality, you’re going to have to make one big discovery: Reality is something that belongs to you as an individual.

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

If you wanna grow up, which most people don’t, the thing to do is take responsibility for your own reality and deal with it on your own terms

I don’t think that anybody has ever seen the real Frank Zappa because being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It’s two steps removed from the Inquisition

Stupidity has a certain charm – ignorance does not

If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mother, your Dad, your priest, to some guy on television, to any of the people telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it

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

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it

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

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.

One size does not fit all.

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.

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