Nat Hentoff Quotes & Sayings

Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices - taking advantage of our freedom of speech - who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do. — Nat Hentoff

In 1965, as Ralph Gleason has reported, when Martin Luther King's march on Selma, Alabama, was brutally attacked by local and state constabulary, Louis Armstrong, then in Copenhagen, said after watching the carnage on television, "They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched. — Nat Hentoff

My contact with [Cato] was strange. They're ideologues, like Trotskyites. All questions must be seen and solved within the true faith of libertarianism, the idea of minimal government. And like Trotskyites, the guys from Cato can talk you to death. — Nat Hentoff

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

Fortune ought to be a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. — Nat Hentoff

Whenever I see that kind of story, where everybody agrees, I know there's something wrong. — Nat Hentoff

Most of us lead or are led by lives of patterned regularity. Diurnally, surprises are relatively few. And except for economic or physical uncertainties, we neither face nor court significant degrees of risk because a fundamental drive in the vast majority of us is toward the attainment of as much security as is possible.
In this sense, jazzmen, of all musicians, are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change. — Nat Hentoff

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

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

Martin Williams persistently gets at essences, and that is why he has contributed so much to the very small body of authentic jazz criticism. — Nat Hentoff

I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact. — Nat Hentoff

Why has slamming a ball with a racquet become so obsessive a pleasure for so many of us? It seems clear to me that a primary attraction of the sport is the opportunity it gives to release aggression physically without being arrested for felonious assault. — Nat Hentoff

There is a seamless web to life.. all life is sacred.. — Nat Hentoff

I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had — Nat Hentoff