T Lehrer Quotes

#1. 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.

Tom Lehrer

#2. I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it.

Jonah Lehrer

#3. I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs. I think, for example, that pi is mysterious enough (don't get me started!) without having to worry about God. Or if pi isn't enough, how about fractals? or quantum mechanics?

Tom Lehrer

#4. I've heard it quoted that I was dead. You can't believe anything you read. That was just an off-hand remark somebody picked up, and now it's been quoted and quoted, and therefore misquoted.

Tom Lehrer

#5. Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.

Jonah Lehrer

#6. Those who know me know I won't hesitate to turn around and point someone out.

Jim Lehrer

#7. If you go to the ball game, you don't need to read the game story.

Jim Lehrer

#8. Counting in octal is just likst counting in decimal
if you don't use your thumbs.

Tom Lehrer

#9. The world is more random than we can imagine. That's what our emotions can't understand.

Jonah Lehrer

#10. 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.

Tom Lehrer

#11. I find that people can pass me on the street who've just seen my picture in the paper and they wouldn't recognize me. If they'd seen me on television, the heads turn. They say, Wait a minute. I don't know who that is, but he's somebody.

Tom Lehrer

#12. I wasn't really a performer by temperament.

Tom Lehrer

#13. 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.

Tom Lehrer

#14. When you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner o' Later those you love will do the same for you. And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do. (But don't you worry.

Tom Lehrer

#15. When someone makes a move Of which we don't approve, Who is it that always intervenes? U.N. and O.A.S., They have their place, I guess, But first send the Marines!

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

#17. The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours,' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted.

Jonah Lehrer

#18. If you asked me to write a rock song or a rap song, I couldn't do it because they're not in my fingers.

Tom Lehrer

#19. Plagiarize, plagiarize, / Let no man's work evade your eyes, / Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, / Don't shade your eyes, / But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize. / Only be sure to call it research.

Tom Lehrer

#20. Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!

Tom Lehrer

#21. People can say anything they want to. If they don't want to get the news from me, get it from somebody else. It's not something I'm going to worry about, I'm sorry.

Jim Lehrer

#22. Don't solicit for your sister, it's not nice. Unless you get a good percentage of her price.

Tom Lehrer

#23. I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story.

Jim Lehrer

#24. I don't have the temperament of a performer, and I certainly couldn't do it every night.

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

#26. What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative.

Jonah Lehrer

#27. In fact, the only way to remain creative over time
to not be undone by our expertise
is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand.

Jonah Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

#29. Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs, I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.

Tom Lehrer

#30. Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories.

Jonah Lehrer

#31. ...Prions violate most of biology's sacred rules. They are one of those annoying reminders of how much we don't know.

Jonah Lehrer

#32. I would do nightclubs and concerts - particularly concerts, which is mostly what I did - and only people who already agreed with me would show up. People weren't going to come and inadvertently turn on their television set and find this offensive stuff coming out.

Tom Lehrer

#33. 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.

Tom Lehrer

#34. If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it.

Jim Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

#36. I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.

Tom Lehrer

#37. The shouting and opinion and jokes don't exist if there isn't first a story.

Jim Lehrer

#38. 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.'

Tom Lehrer

#39. If you don't know Tom Lehrer, you should - in addition to being a classical pianist, mathematician, songwriter, satirist, researcher at Los Alamos and, he claims, inventor of the Jell-O shot, he is just delightfully funny and graceful.

Rachel Sklar

#40. Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!

Tom Lehrer

#41. If people want bells and whistles and all of that, there are bells and whistles available. If they don't want bells and whistles there are places to go where they are not available.

Jim Lehrer

#42. Expertise is simply the wisdom that emerges from cellular error. Mistakes aren't things to be discouraged. On the contrary, they should be cultivated and carefully investigated.

Jonah Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

#44. 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

Tom Lehrer

#45. 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.

Tom Lehrer

#46. If I can't get people to commit themselves on whether or not there is a square root of two, then I won't touch on God or anything here

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

#48. Step up and shake the hand Of someone you can't stand, You can tolerate him if you try!

Tom Lehrer

#49. So long, Mom I'm off to drop the bomb So don't wait up for me But while you swelter Down there in your shelter You can see me On your TV

Tom Lehrer

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

Tom Lehrer

#51. We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.

Jonah Lehrer