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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.

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
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Hands
Remarks
Anything
Picked
Believe
Therefore
Dead
Somebody
Hand
Misquoted
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More quotes by 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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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.
Tom Lehrer
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I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them. And that's not funny.
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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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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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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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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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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When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
Tom Lehrer
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Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!
Tom Lehrer
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Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!
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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I wasn't really a performer by temperament.
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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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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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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Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
Tom Lehrer
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I'm very proud of myself on my, whatever the literacy is, I'm pretentious, totally pretentious. I like to say 'hmm', for example.
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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And although I'm all for freedom of expression and against censorship, there are certain things I'm not willing to go to jail for.
Tom Lehrer