Tom Lehrer Quotes

Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now - to quote myself at my most pretentious - is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.

Tom Lehrer

• Taste
• Pretentious
• Irreverence

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Quotes to Explore

• You have to wait six months to purchase a fuel efficient automobile made from overseas.

  

  Ed Markey
  • You
  • Car
  • Wait

• Cloud services cut both ways in terms of security: you get off-site backup and disaster recovery, but you entrust your secrets to somebody else's hands. Doing the latter increases your exposure to government surveillance and the potential for deliberate or inadvertent breaches of your confidential files.

  

  Barton Gellman
  • Government
  • Doing
  • Recovery

• If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: You're not the audience!

  

  Malcolm Gladwell
  • You
  • Audience
  • Books

• It was in a stonecutter's house where I went to have a headstone made for Raftery's grave that I found a manuscript book of his poems, written out in the clear beautiful Irish characters.

  

  Lady Gregory
  • Book
  • House
  • Beautiful

• Martin Scorsese, everything he does, I've got to see. And Jack Nicholson, I've got to see what he does.

  

  Nathaniel Philbrick
  • See
  • Everything
  • Got

• I'm not the hands-on guy. I like writing the check, and I turn it over to the guys that make it happen, much like the way I ran my business.

  

  Foster Friess
  • Writing
  • Business
  • Guy

• We get a lot of raps as Americans for being small-minded, but in fact, when you really drill down to the core of the culture, there's an enormous amount of compassion and forgiveness and support.

  

  Bartlett Sher
  • Culture
  • Small
  • Support

• Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God, but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.

  

  Karl Barth
  • God
  • Man
  • Hate

• I wasn't one of those kids who was chasing the dream and wanted to get to Hollywood because one day I was gonna get my chance and be a big star. I never felt like that.

  

  C. Thomas Howell
  • Kids
  • Dream
  • Day

• The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Man
  • Lost
  • Feet

• Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.

  

  Lewis H. Lapham
  • Character
  • Effort
  • Moral

• Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back. It must be held out empty - for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity.

  

  Dag Hammarskjold
  • Past
  • Morning

• I think the irony ... is that I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government.

  

  Barack Obama
  • Thinking
  • Light
  • Government

• Necessity when threatening is more powerful than device of man.

  

  Quintus Curtius Rufus
  • Powerful

• Never tripping off the past, I would rather never mind 'em/'Cause only fools trip over something that be behind 'em

  

  Fabolous
  • Mind
  • Past

• What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.

  

  N. T. Wright
  • Work
  • May
  • Hope

• The difference between winning this game and losing it is, you might say, the difference between facing big games now and desperation games.

  

  Joe Gibbs
  • Game
  • Winning
  • Difference

• Why is it I feel a new nostalgia for the era of the guillotine?

  

  Dennis Cooper
  • Nostalgia
  • ERA
  • Guillotine

• In my opinion, Christian Dior was never, ever theatre.

  

  Raf Simons
  • Christian
  • Opinion
  • Theatre

• I had the radio on, I was driving. Trees flew by, me and Del were singing, Little Runaway, I was flying.

  

  Tom Petty Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
  • Flying
  • Runaway

• As far as my creative urge is concerned, I do sit down and write my own music...I'll tell you a writer who I think is a genius: Ray Stevens. He comes up with some of the most fantastic novelty ideas. Dolly Parton also writes well. I like a lot of songs, a lot of writers.

  

  Boudleaux Bryant
  • Music
  • Ideas
  • Creative

• Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now - to quote myself at my most pretentious - is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.

  

  Tom Lehrer
  • Taste
  • Pretentious
  • Irreverence