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" I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English, but Math had the fewest requirements, so I went with it. I knew I wanted to teach, and Math was my field, so I studied Math. "

Tom Lehrer

Math

Teach

Thought

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" You can't be satirical and not be offensive to somebody. "

" Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? "

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

" I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up. "

Tom Lehrer

Person

Shut Up

" In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.' "

" 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. "

" Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery. "

" 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. "

" I'm not interested in promoting myself or revealing to total strangers anything about me. That's not my job. "

" I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it. "

" I wasn't really a performer by temperament. "

" I like Jon Stewart. He's not as obnoxious as Dennis Miller, whom I really can't stand. "

Tom Lehrer

Really

" Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize. "

" 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

Audience

College

" 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. "

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

Tom Lehrer

Hate

Know

" 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. "

" Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. "

" Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. "

" 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. "

" When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex. "

" Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize. "

" 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. "

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

Tom Lehrer

Person

Feels