John Proctor Future Hero, and Present Fool

I believe that John Proctor is a hero and a fool but depending on the time period in which you set your mind to.  If I was a person in that time who thought similarly to him but kept my thoughts to myself I would consider him a stooge.  A person has to be able to know where and at what time to state ones own opinion.  It would be foolish to speak against the majority population no matter how foolish the situation seems. For example he was surrounded by people who had a very close-minded view of God and seemed to believe in their idea strongly. If a person went against their way of thinking they should confess to witchcraft and point the finger at someone else to save themselves.  While this is foolish it would be even more foolish to try and resolve the problem by oneself.  There is a time and place for everything. In his time he was a fool for getting himself killed.
However John Proctor is also a hero. While he didn't live to see the change that he was trying to prove he was part of it. Whether people admitted to it or not when he had the courage to speak what everyone was terrified to say people started thinking of how unfair it was eventually leading to rebellions and eventually the change of these situations. A good example would be Martin Luther King.  Some slaves might have thought of him as foolish for trying to change things.  There had to be some of them that thought that he shouldn't rebel and if they just conform eventually they would at least be able to get little pay or some benefits. However because he had the courage to rebel and state his opinion and demand change eventually more slaves joined together and rebelled eventually leading to their freedom.  He didn't live to see what he wanted to see in the world but it's because of him that the process of ending slavery started. In other words there had to be a "fool" in order for change to become then they would no longer be considered fools but "heroes". In their times they might have been considered fools but in the future they came to be known as heroes.