Hendrik Hertzberg Quotes & Sayings

Robert Kennedy, on his own, left no great legislative legacy, founded no great institution, led no great movement. His most extraordinary accomplishment - and it was extraordinary - was to embody in himself, and create in others, a kind of transcendent yearning for the possibility of redemptive change. — Hendrik Hertzberg

[If the Democratic nominee turns out to be] Walter Mondale, I hope he picks Representative Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. It would be a desperate move, but that's what it'll take to get rid of Reagan. Ms. Ferraro is no more unqualified than a lot of Vice Presidential candidates have been, and anyhow Mondale's in good health. — Hendrik Hertzberg

The filibuster is an affront to commonly understood democratic norms, but then so is the Senate. — Hendrik Hertzberg

The "freedom movement" is a racist movement as such. But it's a virulent example of identity politics. "Whiteness" is part of the identity, but not the most important part. — Hendrik Hertzberg

The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties that alternate in power in our governing institutions. It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on a par with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old. — Hendrik Hertzberg

Where is it written that if you don't like religion you are somehow disqualified from being a legitimate American? What was Mark Twain, a Russian? — Hendrik Hertzberg

A "communist/socialist/progressive" is an oxymoron, like an "atheist/evangelical Christian/Muslim." — Hendrik Hertzberg

Marriage should be between a spouse and a spouse, not a gender and a gender. — Hendrik Hertzberg

I can't agree that what we're seeing is a matter of the American bourgeoisie confronting workers everywhere. It's more like the international plutocracy eliminating the American middle class while inadvertently creating a bourgeoisie in India, China, etc. I do agree that Soros's role is paradoxical, but if all billionaires (or even a few more) were like Soros, the dialectic would give us global social democracy PDQ. — Hendrik Hertzberg

Unfair in practice is not the same thing as wrong in principle, but sometimes it has to do. — Hendrik Hertzberg

A person's character is what it is. It's a little like a marriage - only without the option of divorce. You can work on it and try to make it better, but basically you have to take the bitter with the sweet. — Hendrik Hertzberg

It's a strange sort of attack, to be sure: a wonderfully pacific attack, a supportive attack, an attack without the slightest intention or capacity to cause harm, consisting, as it does, of the earnest wish of certain loving couples to join themselves to that very institution and thus to feel themselves, and be accepted as, full members of the American (and human) family. — Hendrik Hertzberg