Last Updated on 22 February 2026

Quotes from Frank Zappa (1940-1993)

• Anybody who wants religion is welcome to 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.
• A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.
• Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.
• I think business is a good thing. Generals could learn a lot from corporate executives. The first rule is, you don’t kill your customers.
• 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.
• Jazz isn’t dead. It just smells funny.
• A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.
• Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.
• Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.
• One size does not fit all.
• The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.
• So many books, so little time.
• 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.
• The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.
• The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil.
• Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
• Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.