John Brown Quotes

Mars is not an aesthetic God. ~ John Brown Gordon

Whereas, Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable War of one portion of its citizens upon another portion; the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination; in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence: ~ John Brown

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. ~ Bruce Catton

The act of focusing our mightiest intellectual resources on the elusive goal of goto-less programs has helped us get our minds off all those really tough and possibly unresolvable problems and issues with which today's professional programmer would otherwise have to grapple ~ John Brown

John Brown was tried for treason, murder, and inciting slaves to insurrection. ~ John Sergeant Wise

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". ~ Eustace Mullins

Nothing is more common, easy, or agreeable to corrupt nature than to preach a multitude of the precious truths of Christ in a broken and disjointed manner without ever preaching the gospel of Christ. ~ John Brown Of Haddington

The intent and not the deed
Is in our power; and, therefore, who dares greatly
Does greatly. ~ John Brown

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

If you pretend, that God rewarded Ahab or the Ninevites for worshipping their idols, you must prove that God is so far from being highly displeased with idolatry, as himself often declares, Deut. xxxii. 16, 17, 21, - 26. Judges ii. 14. 2 Kings xvii. 10, - 18. Psalm cvi. 19, - 40 Jer. xviii. 7, 35, l. 38, &c. - that he is ready to accept and reward the worship of idols, devils, bulls, dogs, cats, saints, leeks, onions, consecrated wafers, &c. if men be sincere in it. Rare doctrine this, for a Presbyterian clergyman, of this enlightened age! ~ John Brown Of Haddington

So far as I ever observed God's dealings with my soul, the flights of preachers sometimes entertained me, but it was Scripture expressions which did penetrate my heart, and in a way peculiar to themselves. ~ John Brown

Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice! ~ John Brown

If this were a courageous country,
it would ask Gloria to lead it
since she is sane and funny and beautiful and smart
and the National Leaders we've always had
are not.
When I listen to her talk about women's rights
children's rights
men's rights
I think of the long line of Americans
who should have been president, but weren't.
Imagine Crazy Horse as president. Sojourner Truth.
John Brown. Harriet Tubman. Black Elk or Geronimo.
Imagine President Martin Luther King confronting
the youthful "Oppie" Oppenheimer. Imagine President
Malcolm X going after the Klan. Imagine President Stevie
Wonder dealing with the "Truly Needy."
Imagine President Shirley Chisholm, Ron Dellums, or
Sweet Honey in the Rock
dealing with Anything.
It is imagining to make us weep with frustration,
as we languish under real estate dealers, killers,
and bad actors. ~ Alice Walker

To sell John Brown what John Brown buys, you've got to see things through John Brown's eyes. ~ Anonymous

MYTH 141. | Amelia Earhart mysteriously vanished. The mystery behind her sudden disappearance was solved just four years after she went missing. Her plane was found to be crashed near an island in Kiribati and her skeletal remains were found close by as well. The skeleton matched her measurements. They also found her equipment near the wreckage. ~ John Brown

I say, then, that viewed from that standpoint, there is but one single subject of complaint which Virginia has to make against the government under which we live; a complaint made by the whole South, and that is on the subject of African slavery ... ~ John Brown Baldwin

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. ~ William A. Phillips

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. ~ Louise Imogen Guiney

Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Tis mean for empty praise of wit to write,
As fopplings grin to show their teeth are white. ~ John Brown

MYTH 280. | Spaghetti originated in Italy. Spaghetti originated in China. Magellan tasted it on his travels in Asian and brought ~ John Brown

The attack of John Brown upon Harper's Ferry came upon Virginia like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky. ~ John Sergeant Wise

But, sir, the great cause of complaint now is the slavery question, and the questions growing out of it. If there is any other cause of complaint which has been influential in any quarter, to bring about the crisis which is now upon us; if any State or any people have made the troubles growing out of this question, a pretext for agitation instead of a cause of honest complaint, Virginia can have no sympathy whatever, in any such feeling, in any such policy, in any such attempt. It is the slavery question. Is it not so? ... ~ John Brown Baldwin

As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union. ~ John Brown Gordon

The United States is a place where the men govern, but the women rule. ~ John Brown

I have been whipped, as the saying is, but I am sure I can recover all the lost capital occasioned by that disaster; by only hanging a few moments by the neck; and I feel quite determined to make the utmost possible out of a defeat. ~ John Brown

Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way. ~ Yip Harburg

I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose. ~ John Brown

Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. ~ Frederick Douglass

[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. ~ Fanny Kemble

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. ~ Quentin Tarantino

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. ~ John Landgraf

A people without the memories of heroic suffering and sacrifices are a people without a history. ~ John Brown Gordon

No man, with a man's heart in him, gets far on his way without some bitter, soul-searching disappointment. - Happy he who is brave enough to push on another stage of the journey, and rest where there are "living springs of water, and three-score and ten palms." ~ John Brown

MYTH373. | Paul Revere rode through the night to warn the colonists that, "the British are coming!" What really happened is that Revere rode in silence to avoid army patrols while spreading the word to key people. He also used the warning, "the regulars are coming out," as opposed to "the British" since many colonists were still loyal to the crown. ~ John Brown

MYTH 175. | George Washington was the first president of America. Peyton Randolph was the first American President but he was forgotten due to a technicality. When he was President, the United States was called The United Colonies of America. ~ John Brown

I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done. ~ John Brown

Symptoms are the body's mother tongue; signs are in a foreign language. ~ John Brown

I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done ... in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done! ~ John Brown

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 live for the slave; John Brown could die for him. The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery. ~ Frederick Douglass

Reflect on these words from John Brown, a nineteenth-century Scottish pastor and theologian: Nothing is so well fitted to put the fear of God, which will preserve men from offending him, into the heart, as an enlightened view of the cross of Christ. There shine spotless holiness, inflexible justice, incomprehensible wisdom, omnipotent power, holy love. None of these excellencies darken or eclipse the other, but every one of them rather gives a lustre to the rest. They mingle their beams, and shine with united eternal splendour: the just Judge, the merciful Father, the wise Governor. Nowhere does justice appear so awful, mercy so amiable, or wisdom so profound. ~ Jerry Bridges

Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervours, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills. ~ John Brown

No people in the history of the world have ever been so misunderstood, so misjudged, and so cruelly maligned. ~ John Brown Gordon

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

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. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Be mild with the mild, shrewd with the crafty, confiding to the honest, rough to the ruffian, and a thunderbolt to the liar. But in all this, never be unmindful of your own dignity. ~ John Brown

Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends ... every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. ~ John Brown

I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day. ~ John Brown

Beneath this slab John Brown is stowed. He watched the ads, And not the road. ~ Ogden Nash

Come with me, Douglass; I will defend you with my life. I want you for a special purpose. When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I shall want you to help hive them. ~ John Brown

It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature. ~ John Brown

On Ho Chi Minh's desk in Hanoi on the day he died lay a biography of John Brown. ~ James W. Loewen

I've done all sorts of children's things before, but none as big as 'Harry Potter.' ~ John Hurt

I had a sudden image of myself as a sort of large dark simian something slumped there at the table, or not a something but a nothing, rather, a hole in the room, a palpable absence, a darkness visible. ~ John Banville

God hath woven into the principles of human nature such a tenderness for their off-spring, that there is little fear that parents should use their power with too much rigour; ~ John Locke

I don't stand back and judge - I do. ~ John Lennon

God himself took a day to rest in, and a good man's grave is his Sabbath. ~ John Donne

He was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness. ~ John Green

I love lighting Shabbat candles at the onset of Shabbat. It helps me create a strong and firm demarcation of time. ~ Erica Brown

When we contact each other, we change each other. We are constantly making each other. ~ John Powell

Fashioned from the earth, we are souls in clay form. We need to remain in rhythm with our inner clay voice and longing. ~ John O'Donohue

And so we're overbrave and overfearful - we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic - and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal - all of us. ~ John Steinbeck

I was a huge fan of Bobby Cox, a huge fan of Chipper Jones and John Smoltz. And just those guys, I grew up watching those guys and often wondered early on in my career if I would ever have the chance to play for the Atlanta Braves, and there it was. God kind of answered my prayers. ~ Tim Hudson

Mary Jane. Listen. Please," Eloise said, sobbing. "You remember our freshman year, and I had that brown-and-yellow dress I bought in Boise, and Miriam Ball told me nobody wore those kind of dresses in New York, and I cried all night?" Eloise shook Mary Jane's arm. "I was a nice girl," she pleaded, "wasn't I? ~ J.D. Salinger

Stories are the wealth of humanity! ~ Pierce Brown

Lieutenant Chatrand: I don't understand this omnipotent-benevolent thing.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: You are confused because the Bible describes God as an omnipotent and benevolent deity.
Lieutenant Chatrand: Exactly.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning.
Lieutenant Chatrand: I understand the concept. It's just... there seems to be a contradiction.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man's starvation, war, sickness...
Lieutenant Chatrand: Exactly! Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn't he?
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Would He?
Lieutenant Chatrand: Well... if God Loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Do you have children?
Lieutenant Chatrand: No, signore.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Imagine you had an eight-year-old son... would you love him?
Lieutenant Chatrand: Of course.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: Would you let him skateboard?
Lieutenant Chatrand: Yeah, I guess. Sure I'd let him skateboard, but I'd tell him to be careful.
Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: So as this child's father, you would give him so ~ Dan Brown

Al Qaeda has significance beyond its numbers, frankly. And so for us, our 24-hour-a-day objective is to seek out those al Qaeda cells. And, as we seek them out, to target them and eliminate them. And we're doing that 24 hours a day. ~ John R. Allen

I saw how different life was on different sides of the same city. I saw the fear in the eyes of people who were not free. I saw the gratitude of people toward the United States for all that we had done. I felt goosebumps as I got off a military train and heard the Army band strike up 'Stars and Stripes Forever.' ~ John F. Kerry

A nasty day! A nasty day! 'Twas thus I heard a critic say Because the skies were bleak and gray - And yet it somehow seemed to me The day was all that it should be. I looked it very closely o'er; Its hours still were twenty-four, With sixty minutes each - no less - For deeds of good and helpfulness; And every second full of chance To give the day significance; And every hour full of growth For everybody but the sloth - I couldn't see it quite that way, For though the skies were bleak and gray The day itself, it seemed to me, Was all a day could rightly be. ~ John Kendrick Bangs

Seriously, I grew up a fan of Hulk Hogan, and I think I bring some of his best values to the ring ... the values of a superhero. Always do your best. Never give up ... I think kids want to believe in that, and they should believe in that. ~ John Cena

You are not your emotions,you have emotions,and you can master them. ~ John Lennon

For five years Isaac had been working eighteen hours a day. ~ John Hudson Tiner

A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life, a life like the scriptures, figurative. ~ John Keats

This wasn't the way he had expected his life to be. It worked, but that was about all. Happiness had got lost somewhere along the way. ~ John Ajvide Lindqvist

A band's first album's usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it. ~ John Darnielle

I wish I had time to listen to music more. ~ John Edgar Wideman

Civilisation is a conspiracy. ~ John Buchan

No solution [to the problem of poverty] is so effective as providing income to the poor. Whether in the form of food, housing, health services, education or money, income is an excellent antidote for deprivation. No truth has spawned so much ingenious evasion. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

At one level, the message of the book of Ruth is that the life of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but they do get there. ~ John Piper

Where are you now?
Where are you going?
and how will you get there? ~ John F. DeCosta

No one can travel so far that he does not make some progess each day. So let us never give up. Then we shall move forward daily in the Lord's way. And let us never despair because of our limited success. Even though it is so much less than we would like, our labour is not wasted when today is better than yesterday! ~ John Calvin

Who can really say how decisions are made, how emotions change, how ideas arise? We talk about inspiration; about a bolt of lightnng from a clear sky, but perhaps everything is just as simple and just as infinitely complex as the processes that make a particular leaf fall at a particularmoment. That point has been reached, that's all. It has to happen, and it does happen. ~ John Ajvide Lindqvist

'And now I Carve the things I saw in my fever dreams, just as they always wished. I dreamed of you, I think. In the end, I suppose they'll wish I hadn't dreamed at all.' ~ Pierce Brown

I Need a Good Book

I need a good story.
I need a good book.
The kind that explodes
Off the shelf.
I need some good writing,
Alive and exciting,
To contemplate all by myself.

I need a good novel,
I need a good read.
I probably need
Two or three.
I need a good tale
Of love and betrayal
Or perhaps an adventure at sea.

I need a good saga.
I need a good yarn.
A momentous and mightily
Or slight one.
But with thousands and thousands
And thousands of books,
I need someone to tell me
The right one.

-John Lithgow ~ John Lithgow

But this is what leads the heretics astray: that they look upon nature and person as the same thing ~ John Damascene