T Lehrer Quotes & Sayings

It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry
if they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere, how to keep on working until the work is done. Woody Allen famously declared that "eighty percent of success is showing up." NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) teaches kids how to show up again and again. — Jonah Lehrer

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story. — Jim Lehrer

Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories. — Jonah Lehrer

We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise. — Jonah Lehrer

People can say anything they want to. If they don't want to get the news from me, get it from somebody else. It's not something I'm going to worry about, I'm sorry. — Jim Lehrer

Step up and shake the hand Of someone you can't stand, You can tolerate him if you try! — Tom Lehrer

I find that people can pass me on the street who've just seen my picture in the paper and they wouldn't recognize me. If they'd seen me on television, the heads turn. They say, Wait a minute. I don't know who that is, but he's somebody. — Tom Lehrer

I don't have the temperament of a performer, and I certainly couldn't do it every night. — Tom Lehrer

Those who know me know I won't hesitate to turn around and point someone out. — Jim Lehrer

...Prions violate most of biology's sacred rules. They are one of those annoying reminders of how much we don't know. — Jonah Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer

I've heard it quoted that I was dead. You can't believe anything you read. That was just an off-hand remark somebody picked up, and now it's been quoted and quoted, and therefore misquoted. — Tom Lehrer

The civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on. But we know what's really involved, dirty books are fun. That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that. — Tom Lehrer

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

There is something scary about letting ourselves go. It means that we will screw up, that we will relinquish the possibility of perfection. It means that we will say things we didn't mean to say and express feelings we can't explain. It means that we will be onstage and not have complete control, that we won't know what we're going to play until we begin, until the bow is drawn across the strings. While this spontaneous method might be frightening, it's also an extremely valuable source of creativity ... the lesson about letting go is that we contain our own creativity. We are so worried about playing the wrong note or saying the wrong thing that we end up with nothing at all. — Jonah Lehrer

Expertise is simply the wisdom that emerges from cellular error. Mistakes aren't things to be discouraged. On the contrary, they should be cultivated and carefully investigated. — Jonah Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer

If people want bells and whistles and all of that, there are bells and whistles available. If they don't want bells and whistles there are places to go where they are not available. — Jim Lehrer

Creativity shouldn't be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn't be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other 'creative types.' The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y. — Jonah Lehrer

I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first. — Tom Lehrer

I like Jon Stewart. He's not as obnoxious as Dennis Miller, whom I really can't stand. — Tom Lehrer

Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs, I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly. — Tom Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer

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? — Tom Lehrer

When someone makes a move Of which we don't approve, Who is it that always intervenes? U.N. and O.A.S., They have their place, I guess, But first send the Marines! — Tom Lehrer

The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours,' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted. — Jonah Lehrer

I wasn't really a performer by temperament. — Tom Lehrer

Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your . — Tom Lehrer

You can make fun with Saddam Hussein jokes ... but you can't make fun of, say, the concentration camps. I think my target was not so much evil, but benign stupidity people doing stupid things without realising or, instead, thinking they were doing good. — Tom Lehrer

If you don't know Tom Lehrer, you should - in addition to being a classical pianist, mathematician, songwriter, satirist, researcher at Los Alamos and, he claims, inventor of the Jell-O shot, he is just delightfully funny and graceful. — Rachel Sklar

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. — Tom Lehrer

Plagiarize, plagiarize, / Let no man's work evade your eyes, / Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, / Don't shade your eyes, / But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize. / Only be sure to call it research. — Tom Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer

The shouting and opinion and jokes don't exist if there isn't first a story. — Jim Lehrer

The world is more random than we can imagine. That's what our emotions can't understand. — Jonah Lehrer

[It's] troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that's often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe. — Jonah Lehrer

If a person feels he can't communicate, the least he can do is shut up about it. — Tom Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer

Why is music capable of inflicting such pain? Because it works on our feelings directly. No ideas interfere with its emotions. This is why "all art aspires to the condition of music." The symphony gives us the thrill of uncertainty
the pleasurable anxiety of searching for a pattern
but without the risks of real life. When we listen to music, we are moved by an abstraction. We feel, but we don't know why. — Jonah Lehrer

I loved high school, but I wouldn't want to do it again. — Tom Lehrer

Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell! — Tom Lehrer

Don't solicit for your sister, it's not nice. Unless you get a good percentage of her price. — Tom Lehrer

Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air! — Tom Lehrer

In fact, the only way to remain creative over time
to not be undone by our expertise
is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand. — Jonah Lehrer

What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative. — Jonah Lehrer

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. — Jonah Lehrer

I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it. — Jonah Lehrer

I don't think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, 'We need satire of them, not of us.' I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War. — Tom Lehrer

In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.' — Tom Lehrer

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 here — Tom Lehrer

The fatal misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions ... [W]hen the composition of the group is right - enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways - the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions add up. In fact, they may even be the most essential part of the creative process. Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant - not everyone is always in the mood for small talk or criticism - that doesn't mean that they can be avoided. The most creative spaces are those which hurl us together. It is the human friction that makes the sparks. — Jonah Lehrer

Use your conscious mind to acquire all the information you need for making a decision. But don't try to analyze the information with your conscious mind. Instead, go on holiday while your unconscious mind digests it. Whatever your intuition then tells you is almost certainly going to be the best choice. — Jonah Lehrer

If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it. — Jim Lehrer

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

I would do nightclubs and concerts - particularly concerts, which is mostly what I did - and only people who already agreed with me would show up. People weren't going to come and inadvertently turn on their television set and find this offensive stuff coming out. — Tom Lehrer

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.' — Tom Lehrer

Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination. Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth. If something can't be quantified and calculated, then it can't be true. Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything. But every method, even the experimental method, has limits. Take the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn't how we experience the world. (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness. — Jonah Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer

When you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner o' Later those you love will do the same for you. And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do. (But don't you worry. — Tom Lehrer

If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will. — Tom Lehrer

If you go to the ball game, you don't need to read the game story. — Jim Lehrer

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'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 satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them. And that's not funny ... OK, well, if I say that, I might get a shock laugh, but it's not really satire. — Tom Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer

Colin Powell made a number of mistakes in the run-up to the Iraq war, but his advice to his intelligence officers was psychologically astute: "Tell me what you know," he told his advisers. "Then tell me what you don't know, and only then can you tell me what you think. Always keep those three separated. — Jonah Lehrer

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!
Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes!
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.
[Lobachevsky] — Tom Lehrer

Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job. — Jim Lehrer

Counting in octal is just likst counting in decimal
if you don't use your thumbs. — Tom Lehrer

You can't be satirical and not be offensive to somebody. — Tom Lehrer

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. — Tom Lehrer