A biography for Tom Lehrerhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“I'm not interested in promoting myself or revealing to total strangers anything about me. That's not my job.”
“I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.”
“On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away.”
“Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh.”
“In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.'”
“Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.”
“Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs.”
“You can't be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.”
“Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you.”
“I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.”
“I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!”
“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.”
“I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery.”
“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.”
“It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.”
“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 went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.”
“An actress must never lose her ego - without it she has no talent.”
“Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.”