Tom Lehrer Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

"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.

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.

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".

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'.

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.

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.

When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.

Irreverence is easy - whats hard is wit.

You cant be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.

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?

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

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.

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

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!

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