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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

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Tom Lehrer
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: April 9
Lyricist
Mathematician
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
University Teacher
New York City
New York
Thomas Andrew Lehrer
Thomas Lehrer
Three
Checks
Wanted
Boxes
Income
Mark
Blind
Taxes
Blindness
Says
Inches
Away
Check

More quotes by Tom Lehrer

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Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/ And the Catholics hate the Protestants/ And the Hindus hate the Muslims/ And everybody hates the Jews.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.
Tom Lehrer
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In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl now you can't say 'girl.'
Tom Lehrer
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The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended [by the song 'The Vatican Rag']. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.
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I ache for the touch of your lips dear, but much more for the touch of your whips dear.
Tom Lehrer
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In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize only be sure always to call it . . . research.
Tom Lehrer
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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.
Tom Lehrer
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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.
Tom Lehrer
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Step up and shake the hand Of someone you can't stand, You can tolerate him if you try!
Tom Lehrer
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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.
Tom Lehrer
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Everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think.
Tom Lehrer
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Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh.
Tom Lehrer
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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.
Tom Lehrer
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Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!
Tom Lehrer
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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.
Tom Lehrer
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Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy.
Tom Lehrer
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Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!
Tom Lehrer