Nat Hentoff Quotes

[Margot Hentoff] was an editor there for a time as well as a writer.

William Shawn was the editor of The New Yorker and for whom I worked for, God, 27 years; a man I respected enormously because of what he did, - what the magazine was about.

As Harry Blackmun said when he wrote Roe v. Wade, 'Once a child is born, the child has basic constitutional rights: due process, equal protection of the laws.'

Margot [Hentoff] dislikes Bill Clinton because he's totally untrustworthy, and you really ought to have some faith in whoever's going to be your president.

Allen Ginsberg was a remarkable guy. He was himself. He was an original.

I met [my wife Margot] on Fire Island when I had a house there many years ago.

Now that is dangerous, when the people don't know what's happening to their Constitution.

[My wife Margot] was the - I guess, the coordinator or the production manager [of The Jazz Review], and we got to know each other and we married.

[Bill Clinton] has called for expanded wiretaps for the FBI.

He - A.J.[Muste] never got much credit, never got much attention. For example, I wrote a biography of him and nobody ever heard of it.

[A.J. Muste] was very influenced - in - influential in the peace movement, in the civil rights movement.

Trotsky found out about him - Leon Trotsky - because A.J.[Muste] worked. He was an activist. And he organized the first sit-in strike in Toledo in a factory. And Trotsky was very impressed with that.

You have an electorate [in America] that wants to see people who are not tough on crime.

A.J.[Muste] died in the late '60s, I think. He was 81, something like that.

It's perfectly within [Martin Peretz] rights [to fire a journalist]. It's a private - you know, th - it's not censorship. The First Amendment doesn't come into play because it's a private magazine.

[I wanted] to play the clarinet well so I could be in Duke Ellington's band, but that's now impossible.

I went to school at a place that also shaped my life, Boston Latin School.

My father had always been a traveling salesman - New England, the South, whatever.

I once did a - the first piece on Malcolm X that anyone had ever seen in the - white press.

I don't like to feel intimidated by where I make a living.

I felt better about myself that I did it [calling Max Askeli Commander Askeli], rather than have - rather than thinking it and not writing it for being afraid of what might happen to me.

My chronology is terrible. [Work with William Shawn] must have some ago. It was after he was fired by Newhouse. After New - when Newhouse bought The New Yorker, he said in one of those grand press

I've never met anybody quite like [Bill Shawn]. He created - and I'm sure it was conscious - an aura about him of quietude.

Inside that quietude there was the firmest of wills. [Bill Shawn] knew exactly what he wanted to do.

I'd pick - my father would bring home about six newspapers. We had 10 in Boston at the time.

I really envy, in some respects, some of the people of faith I've known - A.J.[Muste], for example.

[A.J. Muste] was - he - I don't know what he finally came out believing in, but it was some kind of higher being.

I've I call [Cardinal John O'Connor] from time to time and he calls me. And when I think there's something he ought to think about doing, I call him and he usually does it.

Counting the ones I've co-edited, I guess about 28 or 29 [books I've written].

I wish [my wife] would [work] because - especially now the kind of - I mean, honesty is hardly the word. She writes with a ferocity of clarity that - nobody else around has now.

[My wife] has some investments and stuff.

I'm working on "Living the Bill of Rights," and it's about people - well, it starts with Brennan and Douglas as people who not only live the Bill of Rights, but try to shape the reason for that.

Bill Clinton outshines John Adams in that regard.

At least they [people] showed the world we could elect a black president.

[People] felt good even though they didn't really know much about [Barack Obama] and may have had some doubts.

A good many people voted for [Barack] Obama, and I'm not only talking about the black vote. A lot of people voted for Obama because of our history of racial discrimination in this country.

[Barack Obama] is a man who is causing us and will cause us a great deal of harm constitutionally and personally.

You see that in his foreign policy [Barack] Obama lacks a backbone - both a constitutional backbone and a personal backbone.

The present Stimulus Bill sets up the equivalent commission in the United States similar to that which is in England.

Under the British healthcare system, there is a commission that decides whether or not, based on your age and physical condition, the government should continue to pay for your health.

That [race] is still part of what [Barack Obama] is riding on. Except that, too, is diminishing.

I can't think of a single area where [Barack] Obama is not destructive.

This is a dishonest administration, because it is becoming clear that the unemployment statistics of the [Barack] Obama administration are not believable.

As usual, the people who are poorest - the blacks, Hispanics and disabled people - are going to suffer more than anyone else under the [Barack] Obama administration.

The general unemployment rate is going to continue for a long time and for all of us. I have never heard so many heart-wrenching stories of all kinds of people all across the economic spectrum.

Even on the cable network MSNBC, some of the strongest proponents of [Barack] Obama are now beginning to question, if I may use their words, their "deity."

[George W.] Bush was led astray and we were led astray.

[Barack Obama to be] much worse [than George W. Bush].

[Barack Obama's ] only principle is his own aggrandizement. This is a very dangerous mindset for a president to have.

[Barack] Obama seems to have no firm principles that I can discern that he will adhere to.