Tom Lehrer Quotes

And that is the story of Alma, Who knew how to receive and to give. The body that reached her embalma'
Was one that had known how to live.

In all probability I'll lose my virility And you your fertility And desirability, And this liability Of total sterility Will lead to hostility And a sense of futility, So let's act with agility While we still have facility, For we'll soon reach senility And lose the ability.

There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex, You may have heard about his odd complex. His name appears in Freud's index 'Cause he loved his mother.

"Life is like a sewer — what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." It's always seemed to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need today in these trying times of crisis and universal brouhaha.

Things are much more complicated. Feminism versus pornography, for example. There are a lot of feminists who think it is bad, but others think it's good. I have become, you might call it mature — I would call it senile — and I can see both sides. But you can't write a satirical song with 'but on the other hand' in it, or 'however'. It's got to be one-sided.

Any ideas expressed on this record should not be taken as representing Mr. Lehrer's true convictions, for indeed he has none. "If anyone objects to any statement I make," he has said, "I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever made it."

Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife. Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. Oooh.

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.

When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
My pulse will be quickenin',
With each drop of strych-a-nine, We feed to a pigeon
it just takes a smidgen
To poison a pigeon in the park.

I ache for the touch of your lips, dear, But much more for the touch of your whips, dear. You can raise welts Like nobody else, As we dance to the Masochism Tango.

The usual jokes about the Army aside, one of the many fine things one has to admit is the way that the Army has carried the American democratic ideal to its logical conclusion, in the sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on the grounds of ability.

Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's apolitical. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Sé que hay gente que no ama a sus semejantes y yo odio a la gente como esa

So get down upon your knees, Fiddle with your rosaries, Bow your head with great respect, And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!

I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.