Tom Lehrer Quotes

I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.

— Tom Lehrer

Life is like a sewer - you get out of it what you put into it.

— Tom Lehrer

I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!

— Tom Lehrer

“Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”

— Tom Lehrer

“If after hearing my songs just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or perhaps to strike a loved one it will all have been worth the while.”

— Tom Lehrer

“Bad weather always looks worse through a window.”

— Tom Lehrer

“All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth, I'm glad to say, is in
The mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man ...”

— Tom Lehrer

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

“If a person feels he can't communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it.”

— Tom Lehrer

Think as you work, for in the final analysis, your worth to your company comes not only in solving problems, but also in anticipating them.

— Tom Lehrer

An actress must never lose her ego - without it she has no talent.

— Tom Lehrer

“Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh.”

— Tom Lehrer

“I loved high school, but I wouldn't want to do it again.”

— Tom Lehrer

“I wasn't really a performer by temperament.”

— Tom Lehrer

“Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit.”

— Tom Lehrer

“San Francisco is a city of twenty-something millionaire white kids named Doug.”

— Tom Lehrer

“I was immersed in popular songs of the time, of the '30s and '40s. I was writing songs, making fun of the attitudes of those songs, in the musical style of the songs themselves; love songs, folk songs, marches, football.”

— Tom Lehrer

“When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl. Now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl.'”

— Tom Lehrer

“I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first.”

— Tom Lehrer

“The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also.”

— Tom Lehrer

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

“If you visit American city, You will find it very pretty. Just two things of which you must beware: Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Pollution, pollution, They got smog and sewage and mud. Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud. See the halibuts and the sturgeons Being wiped out by detergents. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, But they don't last long if they try. Pollution, pollution, You can use the latest toothpaste, And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.”

— Tom Lehrer

“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

“One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.”

— Tom Lehrer

“Base eight is just like base ten really, if you're missing two fingers.”

— Tom Lehrer

“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

“We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares.”

— Tom Lehrer

When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.

— Tom Lehrer

“Be it ever so decadent, there's no place like home.”

— Tom Lehrer

“Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy.”

— Tom Lehrer

“There's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now, two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.”

— Tom Lehrer

Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.

— Tom Lehrer

Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.

— Tom Lehrer

“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.”

— Tom Lehrer

Well, you ask a silly question, and you get a silly answer.

— Tom Lehrer

“Step up and shake the hand Of someone you can't stand, You can tolerate him if you try!”

— Tom Lehrer

“The poor folks hate the rich folks, and the rich folks hate the poor folks. All of my folks hate all of your folks, it's American as apple pie.”

— Tom Lehrer

Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!

— Tom Lehrer

The Lord's our shepherd, says the psalm. But just in case, we better get a bomb.

— Tom Lehrer

“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

“Don't solicit for your sister, it's not nice. Unless you get a good percentage of her price.”

— Tom Lehrer

“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

“I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching.”

— Tom Lehrer

I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs. I think, for example, that pi is mysterious enough (don't get me started!) without having to worry about God. Or if pi isn't enough, how about fractals? or quantum mechanics?

— Tom Lehrer

“If I see a movie star in the department store buying something, I'll kind of sidle up and see what they're saying, what they look like, how they sound. That's an invasion of privacy.”

— Tom Lehrer

“Comedy is very important, yes. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider.”

— Tom Lehrer

“People would go anywhere to see a famous person in the flesh, no matter what they do.”

— Tom Lehrer

“Once you've heard the joke, it's not funny anymore, but it's the way it's told. And I think that's the same with the music: The reason some of my songs have lasted longer is there's a lot of stuff packed in there. You want to hear them more than once.”

— Tom Lehrer

“Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs, I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.”

— Tom Lehrer

“The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.”

— Tom Lehrer