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Tom Lehrer [1928-0] American
Rank: 102
Musician, Singer-songwriter


Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer is a retired American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and '60s.

Friendship, Good, Humor, Money



QuoteTagsRank
Bad weather always looks worse through a window.
101
I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery.
102
Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you. Good
103
I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.
104
Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
105
Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
106
If a person feels he can't communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it.
107
I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.
108
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. Friendship, Money
109
I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!
110
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.
111
Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
112
Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your .
113
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.
114
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.
115
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.
116
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.
117
In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.'
118
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 ability.
119
Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.
120
An actress must never lose her ego - without it she has no talent.
121
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
122
I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.
123
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.
124
Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. Humor
125
You can't be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.
126
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.
201
When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex.
202
Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit.
203
I wasn't really a performer by temperament.
204
I like Jon Stewart. He's not as obnoxious as Dennis Miller, whom I really can't stand.
205
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.
206
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.
207
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.
208
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.
209
I loved high school, but I wouldn't want to do it again.
210
San Francisco is a city of twenty-something millionaire white kids named Doug.
211
It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.
212
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. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first.
213
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.
214
When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl. Now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl.'
215
I'm not interested in promoting myself or revealing to total strangers anything about me. That's not my job.
216
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.
217
When you're in a public profession like I was, and you stop doing it like I did, people think you're either crazy or dead.
218
I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English, but Math had the fewest requirements, so I went with it. I knew I wanted to teach, and Math was my field, so I studied Math.
219
I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it.
220
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.
221

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