Quote

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

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
Kind
Soon
Life
Training
People
Walk
Walks
Fairy
Went
Tales
Came
Library
Reading
Kinds
Christ
Later

More quotes by Nat Hentoff

Image
[Barack] Obama has little, if any, principles except to aggrandize and make himself more and more important.
Nat Hentoff
Image
The ACLU sees the separation of church and state as so absolute that not a single religious word must be allowed to pass a schoolhouse door.
Nat Hentoff
Image
[Arthur Koestler] wrote some other very interesting books, but that book - I mean, if I were teaching, I don't care what the course is, I would say you really have to read Darkness at Noon.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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
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
I don't like to feel intimidated by where I make a living.
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
Nat Hentoff
Image
We need to keep trying to rescue the Constitution from the President.
Nat Hentoff
Image
What's wrong with it is, it lowers, to say the least, the credibility of the magazine. And if I were writing for [The New Republic ], I would feel diminished because the owner had done such a thing [fire a journalist].
Nat Hentoff
Image
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.
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
Image
Bill Clinton outshines John Adams in that regard.
Nat Hentoff
Image
[Bill Shawn] didn't edit the writers very strongly, but he knew what he wanted.
Nat Hentoff
Image
When I speak to students, I tell them why we have a First Amendment. I tell them about the Committees of Correspondence. I tell them how in a secret meeting of the Raleigh Tavern in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who did not agree with each other, started a Committee of Correspondence.
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
We have no idea how much the government knows and how much the CIA even knows about average citizens. The government is not supposed to be doing this in this country. They listen in on our phone calls. I am not exaggerating because I have studied this a long time.
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
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
[Bill Clinton] has called for expanded wiretaps for the FBI.
Nat Hentoff
Image
[John] McCarthy's regime was ended by Senators who realized that he had gone too far. What we have now may be more insidious.
Nat Hentoff