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They [FBI] had a lot of clippings, a lot of articles I'd written. And to me the - the funniest one was - I had done a piece for Playboy about J. Edgar Hoover.

Nat Hentoff

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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
Pieces
Written
Clippings
Done
Edgar
Hoover
Funniest
Playboy
Articles
Piece

More quotes by Nat Hentoff

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The habeas corpus business, that's to show that he [Bill Clinton] is not tough on crime.
Nat Hentoff
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[A.J. Muste] never engaged in violence but he believed, as [Mahatma] Gandhi did - and he knew Gandhi slightly - he believed that a pacifist had to be active in the community.
Nat Hentoff
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[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
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Do not categorize about music. You take each musician at the time and open yourself to that musician.
Nat Hentoff
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Counting the ones I've co-edited, I guess about 28 or 29 [books I've written].
Nat Hentoff
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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
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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
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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
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I always wanted to be a lawyer,but I certainly never wanted to be a trapeze performer.
Nat Hentoff
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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
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I met [my wife Margot] on Fire Island when I had a house there many years ago.
Nat Hentoff
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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
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We need to keep trying to rescue the Constitution from the President.
Nat Hentoff
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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.
Nat Hentoff
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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.'
Nat Hentoff
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However, I never thought that [George W.] Bush himself was, in any sense, evil.
Nat Hentoff
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I'd pick - my father would bring home about six newspapers. We had 10 in Boston at the time.
Nat Hentoff
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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.
Nat Hentoff
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I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact.
Nat Hentoff
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Now that is dangerous, when the people don't know what's happening to their Constitution.
Nat Hentoff