Frank Zappa Quotes

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

The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be rejected; but neither is it to be carelessly echoed.

Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?

It is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

In some corner of the world they are probably still holding regular meetings of the Flat Earth Society. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don't.

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

I care what 51 percent of the people think about me.

I wonder at what point do you stop doing what you think is right and you start doing what the majority of the American people want?

My whole life is a contradiction on purpose - to make you think. I think people have forgetten how to have their own opinions. They're always waiting for someone to tell them what to do and what to wear - it's so boring.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

I've always been suspicious of collective truths.

Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals.

Unanimity of opinion is characteristic of savages and civilization only advances as more and more people have the right to call wrong what the majority calls right..

To talk of resisting what is called public opinion as a crime, is to make Socrates an anarchist and Jesus Christ a felon.

So long as a minority conforms to the majority, it is not even a minority.

When a man can take a poll and tell what everybody is thinking, that means nobody is really thinking anymore.

Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognizes nobody above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorized it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.

The majority never has right on its side.

“I would rather err with the majority than in my own way.” So thought Saint Augustine. I am of the reverse opinion.

There can be no assumption that today’s majority is “right”.

If printers (publishers) only printed that which everyone liked, there would be very little printed

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.

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. Then you can come to an intelligent decision for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you're going east, and you will be walking east when you think you're going west.