Irreverence is easy - whats hard is wit.

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

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 that's just for friends, out of friendship for the people involved, and also because it was fun.

The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended [by the song 'The Vatican Rag']. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.

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

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.

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