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
promoting revealing
I'm not interested in promoting myself or revealing to total strangers anything about me. That's not my job.
certain front
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.'
either people profession public
When you're in a public profession like I was, and you stop doing it like I did, people think you're either crazy or dead.
audience home literate trying
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.
eddie few hbo people relationships seen stuff
Eddie Izzard is wonderful, I think, but I've only seen that one HBO special he did. He's one of the few people who talk about stuff other than girlfriends and relationships and flatulence and genitalia. There are very few of them who actually talk about real stuff.
analogy novelist performing public stopped
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.
fewest knew studied
I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English, but Math had the fewest requirements, so I went with it. I knew I wanted to teach, and Math was my field, so I studied Math.
carried creed ideal logical prohibit
The Army has carried the American ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability.
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.
life
Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
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.
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.
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.