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
irreverence easy wit
Irreverence is easy - whats hard is wit.
teaching mean fighting
I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching.
spiritual thinking worry
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?
atheist thinking arrogant
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.
jail expression censorship
And although I'm all for freedom of expression and against censorship, there are certain things I'm not willing to go to jail for.
proud example literacy
I'm very proud of myself on my, whatever the literacy is, I'm pretentious, totally pretentious. I like to say 'hmm', for example.
stars buying-something looks
If I see a movie star in the department store buying something, I'll kind of sidle up and see what they're saying, what they look like, how they sound. That's an invasion of privacy.
whom
I like Jon Stewart. He's not as obnoxious as Dennis Miller, whom I really can't stand.
high loved
I loved high school, but I wouldn't want to do it again.
awarded became henry nobel obsolete peace
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.
francisco kids san
San Francisco is a city of twenty-something millionaire white kids named Doug.
food
When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex.
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.
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.