Best John Brown Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“In studying the character and works of a great man, it is always desirable to learn in what he is distinguished from others, and what have been the causes if this difference.”

Character Greatness Man John Brown

Book:John Brown

Source: John Brown

“That a man might do something very audacious and desperate for money, power or fame, was to the general apprehension quite possible; but, in face of plainly-written law, in face of constitutional guarantees protecting each state against domestic violence, in face of a nation of forty million of people, that nineteen men could invade a great State to liberate a despised and hated race, was to the average intellect and conscience, too monstrous for belief.”

Slavery John Brown Invade

Book:John Brown

Source: John Brown

“People who never did a heroic deed themselves are very particular as to how heroes behave...”

John Brown Harpers Ferry

Author:Annie Brown

“He is a strange, resolute, repulsive, iron-willed, inexorable old man, [possessing] a firey nature and a cold temper, and a cooler head--a volcano beneath a covering of snow.”

John Brown

Book:The Conquest of Kansas

Source: The Conquest of Kansas

“In the heated atmosphere after the Lincoln assassination, quite a few northerners compared Lee to the infamous John Brown, the abolitionist who was captured, tried, and hanged for the Harper's Ferry raid in 1859. Brown had been found guilty of treason against the state of Virginia after a jury deliberated for only forty-five minutes...Coincidentally, it had been Colonel Robert E. Lee of the US Army that eventually put down John Brown's short-lived rebellion at Harper's Ferry.”

Robert E Lee John Brown Harper S Ferry

Book:The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case against an American Icon

Source: The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case against an American Icon

“I should say that [John Brown] was an old-fashioned man in his respect for the Consitution, and his faith in the permanence of this Union. Slavery he deemed to be wholly opposed to these, and he was its determined foe.”

John Brown

Book:A Plea For Captain John Brown

Source: A Plea For Captain John Brown

“But in the weeks after the conflict, he joined with abolitionists in transforming John Brown in the eyes of antislavery northerners from a madman to a “martyr”. Countless Americans came to admire his David-like courage to strike at the mighty and hated Goliath-like slave power. The disdain for violent Black revolutionaries lurked in the shadows of the praises for John Brown, however. Black slave rebels never became martyrs and remained madmen and madwomen. Never before had the leader of a major slave uprising been so praised. Not since Bacon’s Rebellion had the leader of a major antislavery uprising been White.”

Racism Slavery American History Abolition John Brown

Book:Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Source: Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

“If we had learned anything over the last decade, it was that there was no other way to defeat slavery, except with a willingness to die for it. We had learned what the Negroes long knew. And thus we merely did what the Negroes themselves had done over and over in the past—in Haiti, in the mountains of Jamaica, and in the swamps of Virginia—but could not do out there on the plains of Kansas. We did what we wanted the Negroes to do in Kansas. By slaying those five pro-slavers on the Pottawatomie that night, we placed hundreds, thousands, of other white men in the same position that we along amongst the whites had held for years: for now every white man in Kansas, anti-slaver and pro-slaver alike, had to be ready to die for his cause.”

Slavery Rebellion Massacre John Brown Antislavery Bloody Kansas

Book:Cloudsplitter

Source: Cloudsplitter

“Now he was as lost as the rest of us, and didn't know his way out of the particular patch of woods and that homestead any more than a bird knows his way out of a privy with the door closed, but he was the leader, and he had found what he wanted.”

Slavery Kansas John Brown Harper S Ferry

Book:The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

Source: The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

“You can play one part in life, but you can't be that thing. You just playing it. You're not real.”

Slavery Insurrection John Brown Harriet Tubman Frederick Douglass Harper S Ferry

Author:James McBride

“Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung? Is it indispensable to any Northern man? Is there no resource but to cast these men also to the Minotaur? If you do not wish it, say so distinctly. While these things are being done, beauty stands veiled and music is a screeching lie. Think of him,—of his rare qualities!—such a man as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand; no mock hero, nor the representative of any party. A man such as the sun may not rise upon again in this benighted land.”

John Brown

Book:Apologia per John Brown

Source: Apologia per John Brown

“When we heard at first [John Brown] was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw his life away" because he resisted the government. Which ways have they thrown their lives, pray? —such would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary band of thieves and murderers. I hear another ask, Yankee-like, "What will he gain by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by their enterprise. Such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a "surprise" party, if he does not gain a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "But he won't gain anything by it." Well, no, I don’t suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul—and what a soul!—when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than a quart of blood, but that is not the market heroes carry their blood to.”

Justice Activism Civil War John Brown Abolitionism Henry David Thoreau

Book:A Plea For Captain John Brown

Source: A Plea For Captain John Brown

“Beneath this slab John Brown is stowed. He watched the ads, And not the road.”

Brown Ads Slabs John Brown

Author:Ogden Nash

“Lives of great men all remind us, Greatness takes no easy way, All the heroes of tomorrow, Are the heretics of today. Socrates and Galileo, John Brown, Thoreau, Christ, and Debs, Heard the night cry "Down with traitors!" And the dawn shout "Up the rebs!"”

Men Way Today Night Easy Christ Heard Cry Greatness Hero Tomorrow Dawn Great Men Brown Traitor Heretic Easy Way John Brown

Author:Yip Harburg

“It began with one act of madness, and it ended with another. John Brown heard history's clock strike in the night and tried to hurry dawn along with gunfire; now John Wilkes Booth heard the clock strike, and he tried with gunfire to restore the darkness. Each man stood outside the human community, directed by voices the sane do not hear, and each kept history from going logically... The line from Harper's Ferry to Ford's Theater is a red thread binding the immense disorder of the Civil War into an irrational sort of coherence.”

“[On John Brown:] The poor wretch is hanged, but from his grave a root of bitterness will spring, the fruit of which at no distant day may be disunion and civil war.”

May War Poor Spring Roots Fruit Graves Civil War Brown Bitterness John Brown

Author:Fanny Kemble

“Life is legal tender, and individual character stamps its value. We are from a thousand mints, and all genuine. Despite our infinitely diverse appraisements, we make change for one another. So many ideals planted are worth the great gold of Socrates; so many impious laws broken are worth John Brown.”

Character Law Life Is Values Individual Broken Thousand Ideals Gold Genuine Despite Brown Diverse Stamps Mint John Brown

Book:Patrins, to which is added An inquirendo into the wit & other good parts of His late Majesty King Charles the Second

Source: Patrins, to which is added An inquirendo into the wit & other good parts of His late Majesty King Charles the Second

“We've actually bought quite a number of historical pieces. We are doing a piece on the abolitionists, Harper's Ferry and the abolitionist John Brown with Paul Giamatti.”

Numbers Pieces Historical Brown Harper Abolitionist Ferry John Brown

Author:John Landgraf

“One of the songs that stayed in my head that I really considered a lot was an old folk song called 'John Brown' - not the abolitionist John Brown, but the one that Bob Dylan has covered and sung before. It's about a boy coming home from the Civil War, or maybe World War I even, and about his Mother seeing him all destroyed.”

World War Home Mother Song Boys Seeing Folks Destroyed War Of The Worlds Civil War Brown Coming Home Covered Bob World War I Dylan Abolitionist Folk Songs John Brown

Author:Quentin Tarantino

“If I had to write down the most important people in the history of this planet, No.1 would be (abolitionist) John Brown. Why? Because he's a white man who said he would die for the cause, because they could take him, but they weren't going to take his grandchildren. That brother was beautiful.”

People Ifs Men Writing Said Important Would Be Beautiful Dies Causes White Planets Brother Brown White Man Grandchildren Abolitionist John Brown

Author:Dick Gregory

“It was Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Wendell Phillips - these were the people who made abolition real. Now, none of you guys is in favor of slavery, right?”

People Made Real Guy Slavery Favors Brown Abolition John Brown

Author:Bill Ayers

“[John Brown's] zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun... I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave.”

People May War Ends Light Government Dies Force Causes Sun Land Events Mines Logic Slavery Slave Refuse Superiors Burning Civil War Brown Zeal Inexorable John Brown

Author:Frederick Douglass

“In firing his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is. It is high noon.”

War Gun Civil War Brown Noon Firing Time Of Day John Brown

Author:William Lloyd Garrison

“As Day and other observers had reported, the slaves were leading very comfortable lives. After this tactic [slave rebellions in the South] failed, it became obvious to the conspirators that an actual military invasion was the only solution to their campaign. The merchant bankers of New England, who were directly controlled by the Rothschilds, were no instructed to finance a military attack against the South. Their instrumentality was the already well-known terrorist, John Brown. He was financed by a group famed as "the Secret Six".”

“John Brown was tried for treason, murder, and inciting slaves to insurrection.”

Murder Slave Brown Treason Insurrection John Brown

Book:End of an Era: The Last Days of Traditional Southern Culture as Seen Through the Eyes of a Young Confederate Soldier

Source: End of an Era: The Last Days of Traditional Southern Culture as Seen Through the Eyes of a Young Confederate Soldier

“If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man.”

Ifs Men Stills Action America Black Direct Trade Flesh Revolutionary Brown Comrade Direct Action John Brown

Book:Anarchism and Other Essays

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

“Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.”

Made War Failing Slavery Brown Republic American Slavery John Brown

Book:Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn

Source: Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood.”

Certain Blood Land Crime Revolution Guilty Civil War Brown American Civil War Abolition Abolitionist John Brown

Author:John Mason Brown

“John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.”

“The 60s passed and faded and I grew older, and in 1987 bought a house in upstate New York, and it turned out that John Brown was buried down the road from my house and that he had lived there longer than anywhere else and his house was still standing.”

Stills House New York Grew Standing Brown Buried Faded Down The Road John Brown Upstate New York

Author:Russell Banks