Quotes from Tom Lehrer

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 wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.

It's a sobering thought: When Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years.

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.

Remember the war against Franco?That's the kind where each of us belongs.Though he may have won all the battles,We had all the good songs.

We will all go together when we go,All suffused with an incandescent glow.

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

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

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

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

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.

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.

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky. In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics: Plagiarize! Plagiarize! Let no one else's work evade your eyes! Remember why the good Lord made your eyes! So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize - Only be sure always to call it please 'research'." [ Lobachevsky ]

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

It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I don't think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, 'We need satire of them, not of us.' I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.

I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.