His song "We Shall Be Free" refers to Transcendentalism, in his lyrics "When this world is big enough for all the different views" he states that everyone has a different view of the world and that everyone should be free to express these opinions. Brooks uses the transcendental value of deliberate living to elaborate on what he is singing about. His only source of life is to be free. Living deliberately means living with only the essential facts of life and learning what you need to learn later. Henry David Thoreau wrote: “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, is true knowledge.” When a man has reduced a fact of his imagination to a fact of his understanding, I foresee that all men will eventually establish their lives on that basis. Thoreau tells his readers that if we know what we need to know and if we don't know what we don't need to know, then we are sure of everything we need to know.