183 Quotes by Tom Lehrer

But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.

In one word he told me the secret of success in mathematics: plagiarize; only be sure always to call it . . . research.

Well, you ask a silly question, and you get a silly answer.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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