Tom Lehrer Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I think the people who say we need satire often mean, 'We need satire of them, not of us.

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 don't think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, 'We need satire of them, not of us.' I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.

Think as you work, for in the final analysis, your worth to your company comes not only in solving problems, but also in anticipating them.

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.

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

One of the things I'm proudest of is, on my record 'That Was the Year that Was' in 1965, I made a joke about spending $20 billion sending some clown to the moon. I was against the manned space program then, and I'm even more against it now, that whole waste of money.

When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.

People are stupider than anybody.

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

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.

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!

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

The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I was immersed in popular songs of the time, of the '30s and '40s. I was writing songs, making fun of the attitudes of those songs, in the musical style of the songs themselves; love songs, folk songs, marches, football.

The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also.

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.

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

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

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

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.

When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

There's something mathematically satisfying about music: notes fit together and harmony and all that. And mathematics has to do with abstractions and making connections.

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

I loved high school, but I wouldn't want to do it again.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 like Jon Stewart. He's not as obnoxious as Dennis Miller, whom I really can't stand.

Eddie Izzard is wonderful, I think, but I've only seen that one HBO special he did. He's one of the few people who talk about stuff other than girlfriends and relationships and flatulence and genitalia. There are very few of them who actually talk about real stuff.

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.

Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

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

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 ...

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

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

Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your .

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.

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.

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
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'.
[Lobachevsky]

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.

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.

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

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

Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit.

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.

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

I always prided myself on at least trying to be literate and use the right words, and if the audience didn't get it, then they could go home and look it up.

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