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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

Irreverence is easy - whats hard is wit.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

People are stupider than anybody.

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

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.