Creativity Quote by Frank Zappa

Zappa is doing what he did best: puncturing the polite fantasy that conversation is a clean marketplace of ideas where the best argument wins. “People will agree with you only if they already agree with you” sounds like a shrug, but it’s really an accusation aimed at the listener’s self-image. We like to think we’re persuadable; Zappa suggests we’re mostly auditioning arguments to justify a position we brought in our pocket.

The line’s bite is in its deliberate fatalism: “You do not change people’s minds.” Not “rarely,” not “it’s hard,” but flatly “do not.” That absolutism reads like stage banter, but it’s also a musician’s view of politics and culture: audiences don’t convert, they sort. They gather around signals, tribes, aesthetics. Zappa lived in an America where “free speech” and “decency” debates (especially around music) were really about power and status dressed up as principle. His own fights with censors and moral crusaders likely taught him that opposing sides weren’t misunderstanding each other; they were protecting identities.

Subtextually, he’s warning against the ego trap of advocacy: the belief that if you just find the right words, you can engineer consensus. Zappa implies persuasion is less about logic than permission. Minds change when circumstances change, when trust exists, when someone’s social cost for switching drops. His cynicism isn’t nihilism; it’s a demand for realism. If you want change, don’t fetishize the argument. Change the environment that makes agreement safe.