Top 70 Tom Lehrer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”

— Tom Lehrer

2. “When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.”

— Tom Lehrer

3. “The Lord’s our shepherd, says the psalm. But just in case, we better get a bomb.”

— Tom Lehrer

4. “Always predict the worst, and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.”

— Tom Lehrer

5. “Bad weather always looks worse through a window.”

— Tom Lehrer

6. “I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.”

— Tom Lehrer

7. “You can raise welts like nobody else, as we dance to the Masochism Tango.”

— Tom Lehrer

8. “Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

— Tom Lehrer

9. “It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.”

— Tom Lehrer

10. “Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air!”

— Tom Lehrer

11. “I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.”

— Tom Lehrer

12. “Be it ever so decadent, there’s no place like home.”

— Tom Lehrer

13. “Well, you ask a silly question, and you get a silly answer.”

— Tom Lehrer

14. “Don’t write naughty words on the wall if you can’t spell!”

— Tom Lehrer

15. “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.”

— Tom Lehrer

16. “I ache for the touch of your lips dear, but much more for the touch of your whips dear.”

— Tom Lehrer

17. “So long, Mom I’m off to drop the bomb So don’t wait up for me But while you swelter Down there in your shelter You can see me On your TV.”

— Tom Lehrer

18. “Base eight is just like base ten really, if you’re missing two fingers.”

— Tom Lehrer

19. “You cant be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.”

— Tom Lehrer

20. “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!”

— Tom Lehrer

21. “Filth, I’m glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.”

— Tom Lehrer

22. “Don’t solicit for your sister, it’s not nice. Unless you get a good percentage of her price.”

— Tom Lehrer

23. “There’s ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now, two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.”

— Tom Lehrer

24. “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.”

— Tom Lehrer

25. “Irreverence is easy – whats hard is wit.”

— Tom Lehrer

26. “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.”

— Tom Lehrer

27. “Laughter is involuntary. If it’s funny you laugh.”

— Tom Lehrer

28. “I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!”

— Tom Lehrer

29. “We are the folk song army, every one of us cares. We all hate poverty, war, and injustice unlike the rest of you squares.”

— Tom Lehrer

30. “They love us everywhere we go. So when in doubt, send the Marines.”

— Tom Lehrer

31. “Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy.”

— Tom Lehrer

32. “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.”

— Tom Lehrer

33. “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.”

— Tom Lehrer

34. “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 then.”

— Tom Lehrer

35. “The reason most folksongs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.”

— Tom Lehrer

36. “Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.”

— Tom Lehrer

37. “Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.”

— Tom Lehrer

38. “Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things!”

— Tom Lehrer

39. “I went from adolescence to senility, trying to bypass maturity.”

— Tom Lehrer

40. “Be careful not to do your good deeds when there’s no one watching you.”

— Tom Lehrer

41. “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.”

— Tom Lehrer

42. “Disclaimer: If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared to not only retract it, but also to deny under oath I ever said it.”

— Tom Lehrer

43. “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.”

— Tom Lehrer

44. “On Christmas day you can’t get sore, your fellow man you must adore. There’s time to cheat him all the more the other three hundred and sixty-four.”

— Tom Lehrer

45. “Once you’ve heard the joke, it’s not funny anymore, but it’s the way it’s told. And I think that’s the same with the music: The reason some of my songs have lasted longer is there’s a lot of stuff packed in there. You want to hear them more than once.”

— Tom Lehrer

46. “Counting in octal is just likst counting in decimal – if you don’t use your thumbs.”

— Tom Lehrer

47. “In my youth there were words you couldn’t say in front of a girl; now you can’t say ‘girl.’”

— Tom Lehrer

48. “I didn’t feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record.”

— Tom Lehrer

49. “My last public performance for money was in 1967. For free, it was 1972, with the exception of two little one-shot, one-song things. But thats just for friends, out of friendship for the people involved, and also because it was fun.”

— Tom Lehrer

50. “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?”

— Tom Lehrer