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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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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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Song
Friendship
Money
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Two
Fun
Also
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More quotes by 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.
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When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
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Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy.
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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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Filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
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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.
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Everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think.
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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
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 would do nightclubs and concerts - particularly concerts, which is mostly what I did - and only people who already agreed with me would show up. People weren't going to come and inadvertently turn on their television set and find this offensive stuff coming out.
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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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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Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.
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