Nat Hentoff Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

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

My parents were Orthodox Jews but not very regular Orthodox Jews. I was bar mitzvahed and all that. But God was hardly ever mentioned in my family. Franklin D. Roosevelt was.

The media ignores what is really going on.

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

What we have now in America is a surveillance society.

In England, you have what I would call government-imposed euthanasia

We live in the village. We have a summer place in Westport, Connecticut. We don't spend a lot on all kinds of things. But I have no complaints.

A particular moment - and I'm not, to this day, quite sure how I feel about it - I had always wanted to be in the law books - you know, Hentoff vs. something or other.

We are going to have a long period where people are accustomed or conditioned to what's going on now with the raping of the Fourth Amendment.

Fortune ought to be a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.

The need for education for the individual student should be recognized... home, neighborhood. But instead of that, we have the future being determined by standardized testing.

Liberalism isn't quite as liberal as it pretends to be. And it goes through my adventures with the FBI during the anti-war period and the civil rights period.

Every life is different; being pro-life is not only about saving the fetus, being pro-life is about all the stages of life.

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.

Even civics classes have almost disappeared from the schools. So things have not gotten any better.

[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.

Throughout [Barack] Obama's career, he promised to limit the state secrets doctrine which the Bush-Cheney administration had abused enormously.

[Barack Obama] pledged to end torture, but he has continued the CIA renditions where you kidnap people and send them to another country to be interrogated.

In terms of the Patriot Act, and all the other things he has pledged he would do, such as transparency in government,[Barack] Obama has reneged on his promises.

However, I never thought that [George W.] Bush himself was, in any sense, "evil."

I am hesitant to say this about [Barack] Obama. Obama is a bad man in terms of the Constitution.

[Left] are very hesitant to criticize [Barack] Obama, but that is beginning to change.

I am an atheist, although I very much admire and have been influenced by many traditionally religious people.

In that respect, Martin Luther King, whom A.J.[Muste] advised in the civil rights movement, was also a radical pacifist.

I am optimistic. I have to be optimistic.

This book, "Speaking Freely," starts when I came to New York. And the first chapter is about a man who became a friend of mine, much to our mutual surprise, Malcolm X.