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

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
Eight
Computer
Missing
Two
Really
Like
Base
Ten
Fingers

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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To me, being funny is more important than making a point, but I don't know. Most politicians are so interested in making points that they don't ... I'd rather be funny myself, and I'd rather listen to somebody with a little sense of humor.
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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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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.
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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.
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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I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.
Tom Lehrer
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Well, you ask a silly question, and you get a silly answer.
Tom Lehrer
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I wasn't really a performer by temperament.
Tom Lehrer
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Once all the Germans were warlike and mean But that couldn't happen again We taught them a lesson in nineteen eighteen And they've hardly bothered us since then
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Oh we will all fry together when we fry. We'll be french fried potatoes by and by. There will be no more misery When the world is our rotisserie, Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.
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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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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
Tom Lehrer
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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.
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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I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!
Tom Lehrer
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We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares.
Tom Lehrer
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The reason most folksongs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.
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Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
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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