A Quote by Nat Hentoff

I knew A.J. Muste very well. I tried for a while to be like he was, and that is a total pacifist. But then Margot [my wife] hit me hard in the stomach one day to prove to me that I wasn't as perfect a pacifist as I thought I was.
A.J. [Muste] was a - as he likes to say, a radical pacifist.
[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.
In that respect, Martin Luther King, whom A.J.[Muste] advised in the civil rights movement, was also a radical pacifist.
A pacifist will often - at least nowadays - be an internationalist and vice versa. But history shows us that a pacifist need not think internationally.
I would have fought in WW2, so I wasn't a pacifist in the broader sense. I prefer to be a pacifist, but I think there are exceptions and times to defend yourself or your country, but that war wasn't one of them.
Being a pacifist to save your own life is normal, being a pacifist for the lives of others is true pacifism.
I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
I think these discussions with my father even gave the label of pacifist, particularly with my father, and he mentions this when he turns himself in to prison at La Catedral when he dedicates his action to his 14-year-old pacifist son.
Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.
While I am a convinced pacifist there are circumstances in which I believe the use of force is appropriate - namely, in the face of an enemy unconditionally bent on destroying me and my people.
I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all - or am I?
I will not call myself a pacifist for the very simple reason that if something like a [Francisco] Franco should arise in Spain again, or, for that matter, in America, and tried to take away whatever dwindling civil liberties and human rights we retain, I would resist them with a club if I had to. But my admiration for pacifism as an outlook and a sensibility is enormous. I just find that it gets me into contradictions, as it often gets many pacifists into contradictory positions and strategies.
But Jude,' she would say, 'you knew me. All those days and years, Jude, you knew me. My ways and my hands and how my stomach folded and how we tried to get Mickey to nurse and how about that time when the landlord said...but you said...and I cried, Jude. You knew me and had listened to the things I said in the night, and heard me in the bathroom and laughed at my raggedy girdle and I laughed too because I knew you too, Jude. So how could you leave me when you knew me?
I suffered a lot when I tried to make sanitary napkins and promote the idea. My family - including my mother and wife - deserted me. Villagers even tied me to a tree and beat me. But after seeing me successful now, they come and say that they all knew that I would become famous one day.
In the past, I put too much pressure on myself. I went out there and I tried so hard to get the ball in the hole, I tried so hard to hit the perfect shots.
Dear Torina, I can't face the idea of sacrificing you to this danger. You must stay alive." He caressed her cheek. "Hear me," he went on. "Even if you feel only friendship, Torina, I've loved you since the day you helped me to my feet. I tried so hard to stop. Then I thought you were dead, and my life hurt every day.
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