Stacee Streeter > Stacee's Quotes

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.”
― Frank Zappa

“Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny.”
― Frank Zappa

“Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?'
Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?”
― Frank Zappa

“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.”
― Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book

“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

“Art is making something out of nothing, and selling it.”
― Frank Zappa

“Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.”
― Frank Zappa

“Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?”
― 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

“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.”
― Frank Zappa

“The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life.”
― Frank Zappa

“Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.”
― Frank Zappa

“I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?”
― Frank Zappa

“A wise man once said, never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment.”
― Frank Zappa

“A true Zen saying: "Nothing is what I want.”
― Frank Zappa

“Drugs will turn you into your parents.”
― Frank Zappa

“Don't eat the yellow snow.”
― Frank Zappa

“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.”
― Frank Zappa

“Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on.”
― Frank Zappa

“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.”
― Frank Zappa

“The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own”

“Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not”

“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”

“Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.”
― Frank Zappa

“lf 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. 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. Don’t expect that because you pay some money to somebody else or take a pledge or join a club or run down the street or wear a special bunch of clothes or play a certain sport or even drink Perrier water, it’s going to take care of everything for you.”
― Frank Zappa

“One size does not fit all.”
― Frank Zappa

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

“Most people don't bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom.”
― Frank Zappa

“Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.”
― Frank Zappa

“Anyone who is disturbed by the idea of newts in a nightclub is potentially dangerous.”
― Frank Zappa

“I detest love lyrics. I think one of the causes of bad mental health in the United States is that people have been raised on 'love lyrics'.

You're a young kid and you hear all those 'love lyrics', right? Your parents aren't telling you the truth about love, and you can't really learn about it in school. You're getting the bulk of your 'behaviour norms' mapped out for you in the lyrics to some dumb fucking love song. It's a subconscious training that creates desire for an imaginary situation which will never exist for you. People who buy into that mythology go through life feeling that they got cheated out of something.

What I think is very cynical about some rock and roll songs -- especially today -- is the way they say: "Let's make love." What the fuck kind of wussy says shit like that in the real world? You ought to be able to say "Let's go fuck", or at least "Let's go fill-in-the-blank" -- but you gotta say "Let's make love" in order to get on the radio. This creates a semantic corruption, by changing the context in which the word 'love' is used in the song.

When they get into drooling about love as a 'romantic concept' -- especially in the lyrics of sensitive singer/songwriter types -- that's another shove in the direction of bad mental health.

Fortunately, lyrics over the last five or six years have gotten to be less and less important, with 'art rock groups' and new wavers specializing in 'nonjudgemental' or 'purposely inconsequential' lyrics. People have stopped listening to the lyrics -- they are now only 'pitched mouth noises'.”
― Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book

“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.

Most people can't deal with that abstraction -- or don't want to. They say: "Gimme the tune. Do I like this tune? Does it sound like another tune that I like? The more familiar it is, the better I like it. Hear those three notes there? Those are the three notes I can sing along with. I like those notes very, very much. Give me a beat. Not a fancy one. Give me a GOOD BEAT -- something I can dance to. It has to go boom-bap, boom-boom-BAP. If it doesn't, I will hate it very, very much. Also, I want it right away -- and then, write me some more songs like that -- over and over and over again, because I'm really into music.”
― Frank Zappa