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" Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize. "
Tom Lehrer
Peace
Satire
Prize
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" I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up. "
Tom Lehrer
Shut Up
People
I Wish
" 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
" 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
" 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
" In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.' "
Tom Lehrer
Girl
Say
Now
" 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
" I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery. "
Tom Lehrer
Flattery
People
Interesting
" Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you. "
Tom Lehrer
You
Your
Be Prepared
" I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity. "
Tom Lehrer
Adolescence
Trying
Maturity
" When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex. "
Tom Lehrer
Than
Sex
You
" You can't be satirical and not be offensive to somebody. "
Tom Lehrer
Offensive
Satirical
Somebody
" 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
" Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. "
Tom Lehrer
You
Funny
Humor
" I'm not interested in promoting myself or revealing to total strangers anything about me. That's not my job. "
Tom Lehrer
Myself
Job
Anything
" Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize. "
Tom Lehrer
Nobel
Satire
Political
" 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
" I wasn't really a performer by temperament. "
Tom Lehrer
Performer
Really
Temperament
" 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. "
Tom Lehrer
Right
Always
Night
" An actress must never lose her ego - without it she has no talent. "
Tom Lehrer
Talent
Ego
Her
" 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 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
" Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs. "
Tom Lehrer
Just
You
Thumbs
" Bad weather always looks worse through a window. "
Tom Lehrer
Looks
Bad Weather
Window
" 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 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
" Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. "
Tom Lehrer
Get
You
Sewer
" I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up. "
Tom Lehrer
Person
Up
Shut Up
" 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 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