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" 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

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" Bad weather always looks worse through a window. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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Piano

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit. "

" 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. "

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Night

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

" 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. "

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

Tom Lehrer

Person

Feels

" 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. "

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

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Hate

Know

" 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. "

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

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" It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

Tom Lehrer

Really