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I had written a book called Boston Boy some years ago, and that took me from the time I could speak, I guess, in Boston through the time when I finally left to come to New York. That book had a number of sort of rites of passage for me.

Nat Hentoff

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Nat Hentoff
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: June 10
Died: 2017
Died: January 7
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More quotes by Nat Hentoff

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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.
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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.
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I was in the back of the book [in the The Reporter] doing music.
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You see that in his foreign policy [Barack] Obama lacks a backbone - both a constitutional backbone and a personal backbone.
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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.
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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.
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Being pro-life is an essential part of being a writer.
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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.
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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.
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I got Joan Baez to talk and Alan Ginsberg and some of the guys in the band. And by the end of the piece, another emissary came and said, `Bob [Dylan] is willing to speak to you now.' And I said with great pleasure, `No, thanks. The piece is over.'
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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.
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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.
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[Barack] Obama has little, if any, principles except to aggrandize and make himself more and more important.
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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.
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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.
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[Barack] Obama seems to have no firm principles that I can discern that he will adhere to.
Nat Hentoff
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What we have now in America is a surveillance society.
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The immigration bill - the new immigration bill - [Bill Clinton] has stripped the courts, which Congress can do under the leadership of the president, so that people who had a right to asylum or to petition - for asylum who were legal residents are now unable to go through because that part of the bill has been taken out.
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The people I admire are those who keep on producing and working and going on.
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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