Hendrik Willem Van Loon Quotes

“Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed.

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“On the other hand, when you grow up you will discover that some of the people in this world never passed beyond the stage of the cave-man.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“For tolerance (and you must remember this when you grow older), is of very recent origin and even the people of our own so-called "modern world" are apt to be tolerant only upon such matters as do not interest them very much.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised as King of England. Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“History is the mighty tower of experience, which time has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. - Forward”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“The history of man is the record of a hungry creature in search of food. Wherever food was plentiful, thither man has travelled to make his home. - Page 22”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress.

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“The foundation for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human was given its first chance to become truly civilised when it took courage to question all things and made 'knowledge and understanding' the foundation upon which to create a more reasonable and sensible society of human beings.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“The world is in dreadful need of men who will assume the new leadership - who will have the courage of their own visions and who will recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of the voyage, and have to learn an entirely new system of seamanship.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“An ignorant person is, by the very fact of his or her ignorance, a very dangerous person.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“Great art ... is the result of the labours of thousands of faithful craftsmen who know that they are doomed to remain for ever outside the gates of the Paradise of Perfection, but who nevertheless will give the very best there is in them because the work they do means more to them than anything else in this world.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“Nature is rarely allowed to enter the sacred portals of civilized society.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

In history as in life it is success that counts. Start a political upheaval and let yourself be caught, and you will hang as a traitor. But place yourself at the head of a rebellion and gain your point, and all future generations will worship you as the Father of their Country.

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

This world needs Utopias as it needs fairy stories. It does not matter so much where we are going, as long as we are making consciously for some definite goal. And a Utopia, however strange or fanciful, is the only possible beacon upon the uncharted seas of the distant future.

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“A few drops of science will often disinfect an entire barrel full of ignorance and prejudice.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“Life means progress, and progress means suffering.”

— Hendrik Willem Van Loon