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
math important answers
But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.
secret research mathematics
In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.
silly answers wells
Well, you ask a silly question, and you get a silly answer.
heart past college
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.
may way wonder
Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.
song real writing
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...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 satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them. And that's not funny....OK, well, if I say that, I might get a shock laugh, but it's not really satire.
hood ifs
If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.
maturity trying bypass
I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.
children husband real
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.
fun stupid thinking
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.
animal games two
There's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now, two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.
two eight three
From the three, you then use one to make eight ones. You add those ones to the three, and you get one-three base eight, or, in other words, In base ten you have eleven, and you take away seven. And seven from eleven is four. Now go back to the sixty-fours, you're left with two.
temperament performers
I wasn't really a performer by temperament,
hate apples pie
The poor folks hate the rich folks, and the rich folks hate the poor folks. All of my folks hate all of your folks, it's American as apple pie.