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
The need for a pro-life point of view undergirds everything you do.
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
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
When I was a kid in Boston, it was one of the most anti-Semitic cities in the country. If you were living in the ghetto as I was, the Jewish ghetto part of Roxbury, and you went out alone at night, you might be subject to having people attacking you for being a Christ killer.
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
[A.J. Muste] was very influenced - in - influential in the peace movement, in the civil rights movement.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
Counting the ones I've co-edited, I guess about 28 or 29 [books I've written].
Nat Hentoff
Image
Great pressure was put on the editor, David Schneiderman, to not run the strip [of Jules Feiffer]. It was offensive. It was racist. And nobody apparently read the strip and saw what it was about. And I wrote a column about that.
Nat Hentoff
Image
[Barack] Obama has little, if any, principles except to aggrandize and make himself more and more important.
Nat Hentoff
Image
[My wife] has some investments and stuff.
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
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
[My wife Margot] was the - I guess, the coordinator or the production manager [of The Jazz Review], and we got to know each other and we married.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
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
[Barack] Obama seems to have no firm principles that I can discern that he will adhere to.
Nat Hentoff
Image
Every life is different being pro-life is not only about saving the fetus, being pro-life is about all the stages of life.
Nat Hentoff