Quote

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.

Nat Hentoff

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Nat Hentoff
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: June 10
Died: 2017
Died: January 7
Columnist
Composer
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Music Critic
Music Historian
Music Journalist
Novelist
Record Producer
Boston
Massachusetts
Nat
Nathan Irving Hentoff
Nathan Hentoff
Book
Surprise
First
Mines
Malcolm
Much
Mine
Chapter
Men
Became
Chapters
York
Freely
Friend
Mutual
Came
Starts
Firsts
Speaking

More quotes by Nat Hentoff

Image
The [George W.] Bush administration would go into court on any kind of a case that they thought might embarrass them and would argue that it was a state secret and the case should not be continued.[Barack] Obama is doing the same thing, even though he promised not to.
Nat Hentoff
Image
[Margot Hentoff] was an editor there for a time as well as a writer.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
Being pro-life is an essential part of being a writer.
Nat Hentoff
Image
In that respect, Martin Luther King, whom A.J.[Muste] advised in the civil rights movement, was also a radical pacifist.
Nat Hentoff
Image
My father had always been a traveling salesman - New England, the South, whatever.
Nat Hentoff
Image
The whole politically correct movement, if it - if that's what it is, was spawned by liberals. So I try to avoid categorizing myself.
Nat Hentoff
Image
[Barack] Obama has little, if any, principles except to aggrandize and make himself more and more important.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
You see that in his foreign policy [Barack] Obama lacks a backbone - both a constitutional backbone and a personal backbone.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
[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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
I went to the library as soon as I could walk. So the training came from reading all kinds of people, from fairy tales and later on to - I don't know why - Schweitz's Life of Christ.
Nat Hentoff
Image
I've been reading since I could read, which was about four or five years old.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
The people I admire are those who keep on producing and working and going on.
Nat Hentoff
Image
The second wife [Trudi Bernstein] - the best part of that union, our two daughters, and that lasted about five years.
Nat Hentoff