Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew "Tom" Lehreris an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and '60s...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSongwriter
Date of Birth9 April 1928
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
fit mathematics music notes satisfying
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.
american-musician communication
If a person feels he can't communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it.
american-musician careful deeds good
Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you.
age age-and-aging american-musician consider mozart
It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.
attitudes folk immersed love musical popular songs style time
I was immersed in popular songs of the time, of the '30s and '40s. I was writing songs, making fun of the attitudes of those songs, in the musical style of the songs themselves; love songs, folk songs, marches, football.
life music play
Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
best brush industrial mouth teeth
Brush your teeth with the best toothpaste,Then rinse your mouth with industrial waste".
fellow proud soldier
It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier
answer rather understand understanding
In the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you are doing rather than to get the right answer
against billion clown joke money program proudest record sending spending waste year
One of the things I'm proudest of is, on my record 'That Was the Year that Was' in 1965, I made a joke about spending $20 billion sending some clown to the moon. I was against the manned space program then, and I'm even more against it now, that whole waste of money.
bush george sort tempted
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.
Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your .
life
Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
cabinet found people picked records
The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also.