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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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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
Usually
Afraid
Audience
Even
Always
Titillating
Converted
Regarded
Preaching

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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You can raise welts like nobody else, as we dance to the Masochism Tango.
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 wasn't really a performer by temperament.
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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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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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.
Tom Lehrer
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Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh.
Tom Lehrer
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The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended [by the song 'The Vatican Rag']. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.
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 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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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.
Tom Lehrer
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If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.
Tom Lehrer
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Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy.
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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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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I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.
Tom Lehrer