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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

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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
Expression
Willing
Freedom
Certain
Things
Censorship
Jail
Although

More quotes by 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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It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
Tom Lehrer
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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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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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Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/ And the Catholics hate the Protestants/ And the Hindus hate the Muslims/ And everybody hates the Jews.
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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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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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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When someone makes a move Of which we don't approve, Who is it that always intervenes? U.N. and O.A.S., They have their place, I guess, But first send the Marines!
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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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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Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.
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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The reason most folksongs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.
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 ache for the touch of your lips dear, but much more for the touch of your whips dear.
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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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!
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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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