Tom Lehrer Quotes
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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.
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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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Base eight is just like base ten really, if you're missing two fingers.
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All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder. For filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd. I could tell you things about Peter Pan and the Wizard of OZ, there's a dirty old man!
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It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
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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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I wasn't really a performer by temperament.
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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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I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.
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Once you've heard the joke, it's not funny anymore, but it's the way it's told. And I think that's the same with the music: The reason some of my songs have lasted longer is there's a lot of stuff packed in there. You want to hear them more than once.
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Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.
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"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." It's always seemed to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need today in these trying times of crisis and universal brouhaha.
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Bad weather always looks worse through a window.
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If you asked me to write a rock song or a rap song, I couldn't do it because they're not in my fingers.
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I think that if people are having trouble communicating with one another, the least they can do is SHUT UP.
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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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I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.
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I don't have the temperament of a performer, and I certainly couldn't do it every night.
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People are stupider than anybody.
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When someone makes a move Of which we don't approve, Who is it that always intervenes? U.N. and O.A.S., They have their place, I guess, But first send the Marines!
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They love us everywhere we go. So when in doubt, send the Marines.
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From the three, you then use one to make eight ones. You add those ones to the three, and you get one-three base eight, or, in other words, In base ten you have eleven, and you take away seven. And seven from eleven is four. Now go back to the sixty-fours, you're left with two.
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Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy.
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Counting in octal is just likst counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs.