Tom Lehrer Quotes
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Always predict the worst, and you'll be hailed as a prophet.
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People would go anywhere to see a famous person in the flesh, no matter what they do.
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If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.
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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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I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record.
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Everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think.
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When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
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Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things!
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Base eight is just like base ten really, if you're missing two fingers.
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We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares.
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The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines...I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them. And that's not funny....OK, well, if I say that, I might get a shock laugh, but it's not really satire.
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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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To me, being funny is more important than making a point, but I don't know. Most politicians are so interested in making points that they don't ... I'd rather be funny myself, and I'd rather listen to somebody with a little sense of humor.
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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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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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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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I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.
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Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
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The audience usually has to be with you, I'm afraid. I always regarded myself as not even preaching to the converted, I was titillating the converted.
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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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The audiences like to think that satire is doing something. But, in fact, it is mostly to leave themselves satisfied. Satisfied rather than angry, which is what they should be.
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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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In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.