Tom Lehrer Quotes

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Tom Lehrer

Profession : Musician

Birth : April 9, 1928

San Francisco is a city of twenty-something millionaire white kids named Doug.

Tom Lehrer

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.

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

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.

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

An actress must never lose her ego - without it she has no talent.

Tom Lehrer

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.

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit.

Tom Lehrer

I wasn't really a performer by temperament.

Tom Lehrer

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.

Tom Lehrer

You can't be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.

Tom Lehrer

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.

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

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.

Tom Lehrer

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.

Tom Lehrer

I'm not interested in promoting myself or revealing to total strangers anything about me. That's not my job.

Tom Lehrer

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.

Tom Lehrer