Category: Thought

Creativity comes from the freedom to fail. And freedom to fail comes from experimentation, and that’s what gives something its individuality.

Peter Gabriel, as quoted in The Kate Bush Story (2012).

Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), Demian (1919).

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.

Heinrich Heine, Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

I have, may it please the court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.

John Brown, speech at court in his trial (November 2, 1859).

Print out a commemorative poster:

• John Brown, American Hero: 8.5” x 11”
• John Brown, American Hero: 11” x 17”

If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. . . . Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes and compromises. . . . When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared. The time for compromises was gone — the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union — and the clash of arms was at hand.

Frederick Douglass (May 30, 1881).

It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.

Henry David Thoreau, “A Plea for Captain John Brown” (spoken at a meeting in Concord, Massachusetts, October 30, 1859, while John Brown was still in jail).