Tom lehrer quotes

One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.

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!

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.

Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.

Comedy is very important, yes. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider.

Base eight is just like base ten really, if you're missing two fingers.

Comedy is very important. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider.

Everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/ And the Catholics hate the Protestants/ And the Hindus hate the Muslims/ And everybody hates the Jews.

The reason most folksongs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.

Oh we will all fry together when we fry. We'll be french fried potatoes by and by. There will be no more misery When the world is our rotisserie, Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.

You can raise welts like nobody else, as we dance to the Masochism Tango.

I don't have the temperament of a performer, and I certainly couldn't do it every night.

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.

Filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.

Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.

I'm very proud of myself on my, whatever the literacy is, I'm pretentious, totally pretentious. I like to say 'hmm', for example.

Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy.

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.

Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife. Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. But as we go our sordid sep'rate ways, We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden college days. Hearts full of youth, Hearts full of truth, Six parts gin to one part vermouth.

When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.

The poor folks hate the rich folks, and the rich folks hate the poor folks. All of my folks hate all of your folks, it's American as apple pie.

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

I'm not an original composer. The tunes are not stolen from other tunes necessarily except in a few cases, but they're in the style of songs that I grew up with.

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.

Always predict the worst, and you'll be hailed as a prophet.

I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery.

I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.

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

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth". To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then again, I can get pretty arrogant.

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.

The Army has carried the American... ideal to its logical conclusion... Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on the grounds of ability.

They love us everywhere we go. So when in doubt, send the Marines.

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down ? That's not my department.

I would do nightclubs and concerts - particularly concerts, which is mostly what I did - and only people who already agreed with me would show up. People weren't going to come and inadvertently turn on their television set and find this offensive stuff coming out.

I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.

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.

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.

There's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now, two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

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. I have become, you might call it mature - I would call it senile - and I can see both sides. But you can't write a satirical song with 'but on the other hand' in it, or 'however'. It's got to be one-sided.

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?

Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!

The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended [by the song 'The Vatican Rag']. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.

Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.

Disclaimer: If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared to not only retract it, but also to deny under oath I ever said it.

It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!

Be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you.

I ache for the touch of your lips dear, but much more for the touch of your whips dear.

You cant be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.

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

I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

I wasn't really a performer by temperament.

Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!

Don't solicit for your sister, it's not nice. Unless you get a good percentage of her price.

Plagiarize! Plagiarize, Let no one else's work evade your eyes, Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize... Only be sure always to call it please "research".

Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh.

The Lord's our shepherd, says the psalm. But just in case, we better get a bomb.

If I see a movie star in the department store buying something, I'll kind of sidle up and see what they're saying, what they look like, how they sound. That's an invasion of privacy.

People are stupider than anybody.

Counting in octal is just likst counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs.

Be it ever so decadent, there's no place like home.

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.

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.

Irreverence is easy - whats hard is wit.

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.

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things!

On Christmas day you can't get sore, your fellow man you must adore. There's time to cheat him all the more the other three hundred and sixty-four

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 satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them. And that's not funny.

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.

I think that if people are having trouble communicating with one another, the least they can do is SHUT UP.

In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.'

I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.

We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares.

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'.

"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.

Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, Is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love: husbands and wives who can't communicate, Children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on, And in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up!

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!

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.

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.

I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching.

And we will all go together when we go. What a comforting fact that is to know. Universal bereavement, An inspiring achievement, Yes, we will all go together when we go.

I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit.

In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.

I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene-or, as they say in New York, sophisticated.

I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.

If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.

On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away.

If you visit American city, You will find it very pretty. Just two things of which you must beware: Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Pollution, pollution, They got smog and sewage and mud. Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud. See the halibuts and the sturgeons Being wiped out by detergents. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, But they don't last long if they try. Pollution, pollution, You can use the latest toothpaste, And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.

Well, you ask a silly question, and you get a silly answer.

Step up and shake the hand Of someone you can't stand, You can tolerate him if you try!

People would go anywhere to see a famous person in the flesh, no matter what they do.

But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.