Quotes from Tom Lehrer

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

They love us everywhere we go. So when in doubt, send the Marines.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.

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 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.