Tom Lehrer Quotes

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

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

Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit.

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

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

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 went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you.

Think as you work, for in the final analysis, your worth to your company comes not only in solving problems, but also in anticipating them.

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

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

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

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 wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.

An actress must never lose her ego - without it she has no talent.

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

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

Bad weather always looks worse through a window.

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