Nat Hentoff Quotes

The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war

In order for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.

I marched and I protested against the war in Vietnam, along with many, many thousands of others. But I never quite understood the bombs that were placed in science labs or office buildings.

I was arrested 1965. I had come back from the merchant marines, got into conversations about the war. I had never heard of Vietnam until I was in the merchant marines in constitution square in Athens, and I picked up the New York Herald or the International Herald Tribune and there was my first introduction of the word Vietnam.

Malcolm X was the first prominent American to attack and to criticize the U.S. role in Southeast Asia, and he came out four-square against the Vietnam War in 1964, long before the vast majority of Americans did.

In the '60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know?

The violence of the left is minor. Our total violence of the last 5 years has not reached the level of a single B-52 raid in Vietnam.

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house.

When the guns boom, the arts die.

What right have the rulers of nations to unsheath the sword of destruction, and to let loose the demons of desolation upon mankind, whenever caprice or pride, ambition or avarice, shall prescribe?

Deeds Not Words

When the world’s run by fools it’s the duty of intelligence to disobey.

A. Philip Randolph is the type who believes in force and who has bragged about the technique of force which he used in the threatened march on Washington in 1941. This was the time when he intimidated the President of the United States with the threat of riotous conditions in the Nation's Capital at a moment when the whole Nation was preparing for World War II. Using this method, he and his collaborators secured the President's signature to the famous Executive Order No. 8802, which was the birth of the un-American bastard known as the Fair Employment Practice Committee. The word "reason" is not in his vocabulary. He does not know how to plead or ask for anything that he wants for the Negro people. Using the communistic pattern, he vociferously and obstreperously DEMANDS.

If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

You can't disobey the rules every time you disapprove. However, when you're considering something that constitutes an extreme abridgement of your rights, conscience is the court of last resort.

I am not a political person. My involvement in the Free Speech Movement is religious and moral... I don't know what made me get up and give that first speech. I only know I had to. What was it Kierkegaard said about free acts? They're the ones that, looking back, you realize you couldn't help doing.

If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer.

Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.

Coming of age in the 1960s, I heard the word 'fascist' all the time. College presidents were fascists; Vietnam War supporters were fascists. Policemen who tangled with protesters were fascists - on and on.

My parents were activists and my mother was hugely involved with the anti-Vietnam War protests.

Means are not to be distinguished from ends. If violent means are used, there will be bad results.

I am totally against the war but violence is part of mankind and it's going to happen, but as musicians I think we've got to step up and say 'come on'.

I beg you not to resort to demonstrations, for they have become nothing but burned paper.

Pacifism means letting the non-pacifists have control ... Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage war again, the colored will act differently and become rulers of the world.

Opposition doesn't mean to take arms and kill people and destroy everything.