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

People are stupider than anybody.

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

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

Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs [in the song 'The Vatican Rag'], I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.

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

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.