Tom Lehrer Quotes

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

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

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

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.

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.

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.

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

"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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Irreverence is easy - whats hard is wit.

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

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

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.

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".

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

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

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

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

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'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.

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

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

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.

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'.

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

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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!

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things!

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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