Quote

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

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
Jews
Jew
Hardly
Bars
Roosevelt
Parents
Mentioned
Parent
Franklin
Family
Orthodox
Ever
Regular

More quotes by Nat Hentoff

Image
I think one thing we share [with my wife] is a complete bottomless disdain for Bill Clinton.
Nat Hentoff
Image
I don't like to feel intimidated by where I make a living.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
I've never met anybody quite like [Bill Shawn]. He created - and I'm sure it was conscious - an aura about him of quietude.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
Fortune ought to be a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
My father had always been a traveling salesman - New England, the South, whatever.
Nat Hentoff
Image
I met [my wife Margot] on Fire Island when I had a house there many years ago.
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 grew up in a household in which we had a clock that we won at Revere Beach during the Depression - one of those brass clocks that didn't work - but it showed Franklin D. Roosevelt standing at the wheel of the New Deal.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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
Image
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.
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
I'd pick - my father would bring home about six newspapers. We had 10 in Boston at the time.
Nat Hentoff
Image
I read like everybody - like every other writer.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
The main jobs would be The New Yorker, The Village Voice, The Washington Post and - I'm thinking of The Reporter when Max Askeli was there, but I got fired from The Reporter.
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
I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact.
Nat Hentoff