Explore Quotes by Tom Lehrer

Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit.

When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl. Now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl.'

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.

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

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

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

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

Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.

Once all the Germans were warlike and mean But that couldn't happen again We taught them a lesson in nineteen eighteen And they've hardly bothered us since then

Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife. Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. But as we go our sordid sep'rate ways, We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden college days. Hearts full of youth, Hearts full of truth, Six parts gin to one part vermouth.

Well, you ask a silly question, and you get a silly answer.

In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.

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.

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth". To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then again, I can get pretty arrogant.

You can make fun with Saddam Hussein jokes ... but you can't make fun of, say, the concentration camps. I think my target was not so much evil, but benign stupidity people doing stupid things without realising or, instead, thinking they were doing good.

I wasn't really a performer by temperament.

But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.

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

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/ And the Catholics hate the Protestants/ And the Hindus hate the Muslims/ And everybody hates the Jews.

Disclaimer: If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared to not only retract it, but also to deny under oath I ever said it.

All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder._x000D__x000D_For filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder._x000D__x000D_When correctly viewed, everything is lewd._x000D__x000D_I could tell you things about Peter Pan_x000D__x000D_and the Wizard of OZ, there's a dirty old man!