Hentoff Quotes & Sayings

Don't for once ever think that what you're doing is easy. If it feels that way, you're probably doing something wrong. Throwing words onto a page is easy. But writing, the real kind, is hard. It's damn hard. — Allison M. Dickson

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

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

DID JESUS REALLY PERFORM MIRACLES? — Ravi Zacharias

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

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

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

Pray continuously, and never stop praying, regardless of what state you in. — Jennifer M. Malone

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

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

What are you doing?" I whisper, not at all surprised when he doesn't answer my question. He keeps up drawing patterns for a few minutes, nearly lulling me to sleep, before leaning over and pressing a soft kiss between my shoulder blades. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me onto my side toward him, my back flat against his warm chest."I was connecting the dots," he says quietly. "Your freckles are like stars. They tell a story, depending on how you connect them."I smile to myself as he takes my hand, linking our fingers together. "What did they tell you?""They told me you're beautiful," he says. "And I'm a lucky son of a bitch to have you all to myself. — J.M. Darhower

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

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

One word of praise from a woman is dearer to me than a whole ode from a man . — Maxim Gorky

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

When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new. — Marie Howe

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