Quote

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.

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
Human
Hearing
Humans
Inspired
Something
Songs
Friend
Worth
Perhaps
Nasty
Loved
Strike
Song
Strikes

More quotes by Tom Lehrer

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Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!
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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.
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I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!
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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.
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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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The audience usually has to be with you, I'm afraid. I always regarded myself as not even preaching to the converted, I was titillating the converted.
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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.
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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.'
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When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
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I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.
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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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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!
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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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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.
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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So long, Mom I'm off to drop the bomb So don't wait up for me But while you swelter Down there in your shelter You can see me On your TV
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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Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh.
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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Filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
Tom Lehrer