Tom Lehrer Quotes
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Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things!
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My last public performance for money was in 1967. For free, it was 1972, with the exception of two little one-shot, one-song things. But that's just for friends, out of friendship for the people involved, and also because it was fun.
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Always predict the worst, and you'll be hailed as a prophet.
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When you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner o' Later those you love will do the same for you. And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do. (But don't you worry.
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But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.
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I've heard it quoted that I was dead. You can't believe anything you read. That was just an off-hand remark somebody picked up, and now it's been quoted and quoted, and therefore misquoted.
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Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
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Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs in the song 'The Vatican Rag', I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.
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Once all the Germans were warlike and mean But that couldn't happen again We taught them a lesson in nineteen eighteen And they've hardly bothered us since then
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For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man facing single-handedly a half a ton of angry pot roast!
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And although I'm all for freedom of expression and against censorship, there are certain things I'm not willing to go to jail for.
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So long, Mom I'm off to drop the bomb So don't wait up for me But while you swelter Down there in your shelter You can see me On your TV
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Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
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Don't solicit for your sister, it's not nice. Unless you get a good percentage of her price.
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I find that people can pass me on the street who've just seen my picture in the paper and they wouldn't recognize me. If they'd seen me on television, the heads turn. They say, "Wait a minute. I don't know who that is, but he's somebody.
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If I can't get people to commit themselves on whether or not there is a square root of two, then I won't touch on God or anything here
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I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs. I think, for example, that pi is mysterious enough (don't get me started!) without having to worry about God. Or if pi isn't enough, how about fractals? or quantum mechanics?
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Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!
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The civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on. But we know what's really involved, dirty books are fun. That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that.
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As for language, almost everything goes now. That is not to say that verbal taboos have disappeared, but merely that they have shifted somewhat. In my youth, for example, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl'.
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You can make fun with Saddam Hussein jokes ... but you can't make fun of, say, the concentration camps. I think my target was not so much evil, but benign stupidity people doing stupid things without realising or, instead, thinking they were doing good.
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Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
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Things are much more complicated. Feminism versus pornography, for example. There are a lot of feminists who think it is bad, but others think it's good.
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Base eight is just like base ten really, if you're missing two fingers.