Hendrik Willem Van Loon Quotations

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

Life means progress, and progress means suffering.

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

....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.

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.

In such a case the writer is apt to have recourse to epigrams. Somewhere in this world there is an epigram for every dilemma.

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

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.

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

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.