Nat Hentoff Quotes

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.

He has absolutely no judicial supervision of all of this [ invasions of privacy ]. So all in all, [Barack] Obama is a disaster.

The NSA has the capacity to keep track of everything we do on the phone and on the internet.[Barack] Obama has done nothing about that.

The Fourth Amendment is on life support and the chief agent of that is the National Security Agency.

In fact, we have never had more invasions of privacy than we have now [with Barack Obama].

The irony is that [Barack] Obama was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He would, most of all, know that what he is doing weakens the Constitution.

An example is ObamaCare, which is now embattled in the Senate. If that goes through the way [Barack] Obama wants, we will have something very much like the British system.

I write a syndicated column for The Washington Post that goes to about 200, 250 papers.

I write a column for The Village Voice, which I've done since time immemorial, and occasionally - and books. And I occasionally write minor notes for record albums and occasional articles.

I've always been amused by [Bob] Dylan; I don't think he's been amused by me.

I guess I haven't talked to Bob Dylan since before then [interview to Rolling Stones]. I follow his career.

The second wife [Trudi Bernstein] - the best part of that union, our two daughters, and that lasted about five years.

[Margot Hentoff] stopped [writing]. She decided that she had nothing more to say. And yet, every day, she has a whole lot to say, and I wish she'd write it down.

I think one thing we share [with my wife] is a complete bottomless disdain for Bill Clinton.

I guess you'd say, including the - what I just spoke about, the learning that liberalism isn't quite as liberal as it pretends to be.

When I approached one of his secretaries for an interview, I was told that Bob [Dylan] didn't want to see me anymore because of what my wife Margot [Hentoff] had written.

[John] McCarthy's regime was ended by Senators who realized that he had gone too far. What we have now may be more insidious.

Even though the clock didn't work, we kept the clock because of how we felt about Franklin D. Roosevelt . A lot since then I knew about FDR I wouldn't have been so enthusiastic.

There are enough people who are starting to be actively involved that we can turn things around. And we need to encourage others to become involved.

The whole politically correct movement, if it - if that's what it is, was spawned by liberals. So I try to avoid categorizing myself.

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.

I am optimistic. I have to be optimistic.

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

A.J. [Muste] was a - as he likes to say, a radical pacifist.

[A.J. Muste] never engaged in violence but he believed, as [Mahatma] Gandhi did - and he knew Gandhi slightly - he believed that a pacifist had to be active in the community.

I don't think [Bill Clinton] does anything - I don't think it's ill will. I don't think he's evil in the sense that he hates the Bill of Rights. He does what he figures will help him politically.

The habeas corpus business, that's to show that he [Bill Clinton] is not tough on crime.

Bob Dylan was uncomfortable being known as just a protest singer. He wanted to go back into himself and do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.

I am against anybody who uses violence to make their points.

Malcolm X made it very clear that if somebody goes after you - whether it's cops or not - you have to defend yourself. But he was not an advocate for violence the way the Black Panthers were.

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