Nat Hentoff Quotes

Quotes about:

• Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices - taking advantage of our freedom of speech - who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do.

  Nat Hentoff

  Country, Government, Ideas

  38 Copy quote

• Americans have only the dimmest notion of what their constitutional freedoms are - and what it took to get them...[and] the willingness to surrender what we're supposed to be fighting for is a recurring part of our history.

  Nat Hentoff

  Fighting, Surrender, Notion

  26 Copy quote

• Means and ends are central. If your means are corroded, your ends will be corroded. And if you're fighting to preserve liberty and you use means that eviscerate our liberties, the end will be corroded, too.

  Nat Hentoff

  Freedom, Mean, Fighting

  "Dangers to Civil Liberties and Learning from the First Iraq Warv". "Now" with Bill Moyers, billmoyers.com. February 28, 2003.

  32 Copy quote

• I say personally because I am 84 years old, and [Barack Obama's] is the first administration that has scared me in terms of my lifespan.

  Nat Hentoff

  Years, Firsts, Administration

  Source: annaz.blogspot.com

  4 Copy quote

• I always wanted to be a lawyer,but I certainly never wanted to be a trapeze performer.

  Nat Hentoff

  Lawyer, Trapeze, Wanted

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

  24 Copy quote

• There is a seamless web to life.. all life is sacred.

  Nat Hentoff

  Sacred, Life Is, Seamless

  20 Copy quote

• I have I guess 3 passions. One is the Constitution. The other is jazz and the other is being an atheist prolifer which, of course, gets me in a lot of trouble - all of which combines into free expression.

  Nat Hentoff

  Atheist, Passion, Expression

  Source: www.rutherford.org

  20 Copy quote

• [Barack] Obama has little, if any, principles except to aggrandize and make himself more and more important.

  Nat Hentoff

  Important, Principles, Littles

  Source: annaz.blogspot.com

  4 Copy quote

• One of the worst elements of Obama's career, which no one talks about, is that he voted twice for a bill that said, if there is a botched abortion, if the child emerges from the womb alive, it should be okay to kill the baby. We have elected a president - twice! - who agrees with infanticide.

  Nat Hentoff

  Baby, Children, Careers

  Source: www.humanlifereview.com

  15 Copy quote

• A lot of people in the adult population have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights.

  Nat Hentoff

  Rights, Ideas, People

  Source: annaz.blogspot.com

  13 Copy quote

• I got a letter one day from somebody saying, `You're always criticizing the press. Why don't you talk about what Clay Felker is doing to your own paper [The Voice]?' And my 10-year-old son Tom, now with Williams & Connelly, put in a legal opinion, not - an opinion from the back of the car saying, `You know why? What are you, afraid?' So I wrote the column. I - you know, - the column simply said that Felker is destroying this paper.

  Nat Hentoff

  Son, Years, Voice

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

  15 Copy quote

• When I speak to students, I tell them why we have a First Amendment. I tell them about the Committees of Correspondence. I tell them how in a secret meeting of the Raleigh Tavern in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who did not agree with each other, started a Committee of Correspondence.

  Nat Hentoff

  Virginia, Secret, Taverns

  Source: annaz.blogspot.com

  4 Copy quote

• Do not categorize about music. You take each musician at the time and open yourself to that musician.

  Nat Hentoff

  Musician

  Source: www.rutherford.org

  13 Copy quote

• I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had

  Nat Hentoff

  Thinking, President, Dangerous

  "Nat Hentoff: Obama Dangerous, Destructive". Interview with John W. Whitehead, www.realclearpolitics.com. December 11, 2009.

  16 Copy quote

• A liberal was somebody who expected and hoped that government would help the poor - you know, that whole routine. I did not know then and I've learned since that in an area that means a lot to me, free speech, liberals are as bad as many conservatives in trying to censor speech.

  Nat Hentoff

  Mean, Government, Trying

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Young people get very excited when they hear why they are Americans. It is not hard to do.

  Nat Hentoff

  People, Excited, Young

  Source: annaz.blogspot.com

  4 Copy quote

• The media ignores what is really going on.

  Nat Hentoff

  Media

  Source: www.lewrockwell.com

  10 Copy quote

• [Madness] happened so frequently. I think what I was most maddest about - and it's in the book [Speaking Freely: A Memoir] - when the House and the Senate, back in 1984, were debating a bill that would - at least delay and maybe stop some of the ex - summary execution of disabled children - infants. And the Down syndrome kids and other kids had been, in some cases, routinely let die, to use the euphemism.

  Nat Hentoff

  Children, Book, Kids

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

  13 Copy quote

• I was introduced to jazz, and that's become a basic concern and passion of mine ever since.

  Nat Hentoff

  Passion, Jazz, Concern

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

  12 Copy quote

• I was co-editor of the magazine called The Jazz Review, which was a pioneering magazine because it was the only magazine, then or now, in which all the articles were written by musicians, by jazz men. They had been laboring for years under the stereotype that they weren't very articulate except when they picked up their horn.

  Nat Hentoff

  Men, Years, Editors

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

  4 Copy quote

• [A.J. Muste] was from Michigan and he grew up in the Dutch Reform Church there, which is a fairly strict church. He later came to New York. He was the minister of a labor temple in the - on the East Side. Then he founded, to my knowledge, the first, maybe the only, labor school; that is, Cornell has a labor department and other schools. But this was a school for - entirely for labor organizers, and he was the - the chairman.

  Nat Hentoff

  New York, School, Church

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

  11 Copy quote

• What we have now in America is a surveillance society.

  Nat Hentoff

  America, Surveillance

  Source: www.lewrockwell.com

  8 Copy quote

• There's a black lawyer in Galveston, Texas, who was the unpaid NAACP general counsel in Texas. He had a great record in housing discrimination, labor discrimination. He decided to take as a client a member of the Ku Klux Klan because the state wanted to get the membership lists of the Klan to find out if they could get something on the Klan. And he said, `I got to take you. I despise you. But we, the NAACP, won that case; NAACP vs. Alabama in the 1950s. Nobody has the right to get your membership lists.' He was fired from the NAACP. To me, he's a hero.

  Nat Hentoff

  Hero, Texas, Ku Klux Klan

  Source: thedailyhatch.org

  7 Copy quote

• I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact.

  Nat Hentoff

  Firsts, United States, First Amendment

  9 Copy quote

• My contact with [Cato] was strange. They're ideologues, like Trotskyites. All questions must be seen and solved within the true faith of libertarianism, the idea of minimal government. And like Trotskyites, the guys from Cato can talk you to death.

  Nat Hentoff

  Government, Ideas, Guy

  10 Copy quote

Page 1 of 9

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin