He is a strange, resolute, repulsive, iron-willed…

A slowness to applaud betrays a cold temper or an envious spirit.

— Hannah More

John Brown was one of my longtime heroes, and it was with no little amount of temerity that I accepted the role. There are…

— Sterling Hayden

Lives of great men all remind us, Greatness takes no easy way, All the heroes of tomorrow, Are the heretics of today. Socrates and…

— Yip Harburg

As Day and other observers had reported, the slaves were leading very comfortable lives. After this tactic [slave rebellions in the South] failed, it…

— Eustace Mullins

“On Ho Chi Minh's desk in Hanoi on the day he died lay a biography of John Brown.”

— James W. Loewen

“lived in the family of a Mr. Brown, the father of John Brown—"whose body lies mouldering in the grave, while his soul goes marching…

— Ulysses S. Grant

“If we had learned anything over the last decade, it was that there was no other way to defeat slavery, except with a willingness…

— Russell Banks

Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Ogden Nash

It was Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Wendell Phillips - these were the people who made abolition real. Now, none of you guys…

— Bill Ayers

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

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

— Annie Brown

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.

— George Haven Putnam

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…

— Dick Gregory

One of the songs that stayed in my head that I really considered a lot was an old folk song called 'John Brown' -…

— Quentin Tarantino