Tom Lehrer
As for language, almost everything goes now. That is not to say that verbal taboos have disappeared, but merely that they have shifted somewhat. In my youth, for example, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl'.Collection: Girl
Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now - to quote myself at my most pretentious - is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste.Collection: Funny
You cant be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.Collection: Offensive
Irreverence is easy - whats hard is wit.Collection: Irreverence
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?Collection: Spiritual
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 the grounds of ability.Collection: Funny
The reason most folksongs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.Collection: People
Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.Collection: Science
One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Expression
We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares.Collection: Song
Base eight is just like base ten really, if you're missing two fingers.Collection: Eight
I'm not an original composer. The tunes are not stolen from other tunes necessarily except in a few cases, but they're in the style of songs that I grew up with.Collection: Song
But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.Collection: Education
You can raise welts like nobody else, as we dance to the Masochism Tango.Collection: Dancing
If I can't get people to commit themselves on whether or not there is a square root of two, then I won't touch on God or anything hereCollection: Commitment
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.Collection: Stars
Don't solicit for your sister, it's not nice. Unless you get a good percentage of her price.Collection: Nice
The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended [by the song 'The Vatican Rag']. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.Collection: People
Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?Collection: Who Cares
I ache for the touch of your lips dear, but much more for the touch of your whips dear.Collection: Lips
The Lord's our shepherd, says the psalm. But just in case, we better get a bomb.Collection: Shepherds
Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy.Collection: Humorous
I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene-or, as they say in New York, sophisticated.Collection: Song
I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.Collection: Song
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean But that couldn't happen again We taught them a lesson in nineteen eighteen And they've hardly bothered us since thenCollection: Prayer
Oh we will all fry together when we fry. We'll be french fried potatoes by and by. There will be no more misery When the world is our rotisserie, Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.Collection: Together
For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man facing single-handedly a half a ton of angry pot roast!Collection: Beautiful
And we will all go together when we go. What a comforting fact that is to know. Universal bereavement, An inspiring achievement, Yes, we will all go together when we go.Collection: Achievement
In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.Collection: Success
Comedy is very important. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider.Collection: Mean
Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!Collection: Wall
People are stupider than anybody.Collection: People
Be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you.Collection: Funny
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!Collection: Children
If you asked me to write a rock song or a rap song, I couldn't do it because they're not in my fingers.Collection: Song
There's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now, two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.Collection: Animal
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.Collection: Teaching
I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.Collection: Want
If you visit American city, You will find it very pretty. Just two things of which you must beware: Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Pollution, pollution, They got smog and sewage and mud. Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud. See the halibuts and the sturgeons Being wiped out by detergents. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, But they don't last long if they try. Pollution, pollution, You can use the latest toothpaste, And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.Collection: Running
Filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Heart
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/ And the Catholics hate the Protestants/ And the Hindus hate the Muslims/ And everybody hates the Jews.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Atheist