Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs. "
Tom Lehrer
Just
You
Thumbs
Related Quotes:
" 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
Loved
Worth
Say
" I wasn't really a performer by temperament. "
Tom Lehrer
Performer
Really
Temperament
" Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. "
Tom Lehrer
Get
You
Sewer
" There's something mathematically satisfying about music: notes fit together and harmony and all that. And mathematics has to do with abstractions and making connections. "
Tom Lehrer
Harmony
Together
Music
" 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. "
Tom Lehrer
Writing
Night
Me
" Eddie Izzard is wonderful, I think, but I've only seen that one HBO special he did. He's one of the few people who talk about stuff other than girlfriends and relationships and flatulence and genitalia. There are very few of them who actually talk about real stuff. "
Tom Lehrer
Relationships
People
Think
" Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit. "
Tom Lehrer
Easy
Irreverence
Wit
" 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. "
Tom Lehrer
Out
Figure
Problem
" I like Jon Stewart. He's not as obnoxious as Dennis Miller, whom I really can't stand. "
Tom Lehrer
Really
He
Like
" The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines. "
Tom Lehrer
People
Important
Real
" One of the things I'm proudest of is, on my record 'That Was the Year that Was' in 1965, I made a joke about spending $20 billion sending some clown to the moon. I was against the manned space program then, and I'm even more against it now, that whole waste of money. "
Tom Lehrer
Now
Space
Clown
" I always prided myself on at least trying to be literate and use the right words, and if the audience didn't get it, then they could go home and look it up. "
Tom Lehrer
Trying
Right
Myself
" I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity. "
Tom Lehrer
Adolescence
Trying
Maturity
" 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
Friends
Money
Fun
" It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years. "
Tom Lehrer
Been
Thought
Age
" 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
Writing
Quit
Now And Then
" Bad weather always looks worse through a window. "
Tom Lehrer
Looks
Bad Weather
Window
" When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex. "
Tom Lehrer
Than
Sex
You
" Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize. "
Tom Lehrer
Nobel
Satire
Political
" Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. "
Tom Lehrer
You
Funny
Humor
" Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it. "
Tom Lehrer
Like
Life
Piano
" Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you. "
Tom Lehrer
You
Your
Be Prepared
" It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year. "
Tom Lehrer
Dead
Age
Been
" 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
Time
Love
Style
" The Army has carried the American ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability. "
Tom Lehrer
Army
Race
Color
" I loved high school, but I wouldn't want to do it again. "
Tom Lehrer
High School
Want
Loved
" When you're in a public profession like I was, and you stop doing it like I did, people think you're either crazy or dead. "
Tom Lehrer
Think
Stop
People
" 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
You
Three
Box
" An actress must never lose her ego - without it she has no talent. "
Tom Lehrer
Talent
Ego
Her
" 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
Girl
College
You