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I wasn't really a performer by temperament.

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
Wasn
Really
Performer
Temperament
Performers

More quotes by 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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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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Bad weather always looks worse through a window.
Tom Lehrer
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Well, you ask a silly question, and you get a silly answer.
Tom Lehrer
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Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.
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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Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
Tom Lehrer
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They love us everywhere we go. So when in doubt, send the Marines.
Tom Lehrer
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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.
Tom Lehrer
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Plagiarize! Plagiarize, Let no one else's work evade your eyes, Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize... Only be sure always to call it please research.
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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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.
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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But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.
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
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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I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.
Tom Lehrer
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Filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
Tom Lehrer
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The reason most folksongs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.
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