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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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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
Atrocious
Written
Reason
People

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Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
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When you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner o' Later those you love will do the same for you. And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do. (But don't you worry.
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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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Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh.
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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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Be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you.
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Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!
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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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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
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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.
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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.
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Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!
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You can raise welts like nobody else, as we dance to the Masochism Tango.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Oh we will all fry together when we fry. We'll be french fried potatoes by and by. There will be no more misery When the world is our rotisserie, Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.
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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.
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It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
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