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Hendrik Willem van Loon QUOTES

Hendrik Willem van Loon QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " 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 , The Story of Mankind

3 " 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 , The Story of Mankind

4 " 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 , The Story of Mankind

5 " 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 , The Story of Mankind

6 " Any frontal 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

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

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , The Story of Mankind

8 " 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 , The Story of Mankind

9 " Is there any greater pleasure in this world than to sit around a table with people you really like, with whom you are tuned in on the same emotional and spiritual wave length, so that there never is any static, and with whom you agree so fully upon all matters of real significance that you can disagree just as heartily upon the nonessentials? We have by far too little of that sort of thing in America. We seem to feel that we should always be doing something. Just to sit and talk or, even worse, just to sit and do nothing at all, not even talk, is held to be a waste of time. How can one waste something that does not really exist, I never have been able to understand, but I do think that it would be of the greatest benefit to us as a nation if we could learn to spend at least half an hour after every meal sitting quietly around the dinner table. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

10 " For history is like life. The more things change, the more they remain the same. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , The Story of Mankind

11 " He was like one of those elderly gentlemen in Central Park who go around feeding birds and squirrels. Their pockets are filled with everything these small creatures may like to eat. The birds and the squirrels sense this and they perch on the shoulders of their benefactors and climb all over them in quest of what they consider their legitimate belongings. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

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

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , The Story of Mankind

13 " (G)aiety and kindness and tolerance and understanding were the gifts he bestowed upon the world. Wherever he went, he squandered these rare possessions in a most magnificent and bountiful manner, for he knew (what all wise people have realized since the beginning of time) that the only treasures which are truly ours are those we lay up in the hearts of our friends. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

14 " As a day well spent gives joyful sleep, so does a life well spent give joyful death.

—Leonardo da Vinci "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

15 " Never worry about what may happen tomorrow, for in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it won't. And don't take things too seriously, for very few things are worth it. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

16 " The original mistake, which was responsible for all this misery, was committed when our scientists began to create a new world of steel and iron and chemistry and electricity and forgot that the human mind is slower than the proverbial turtle, is lazier than the well-known sloth, and marches from one hundred to three hundred years behind the small group of courageous leaders. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , The Story of Mankind

17 " (N)o more weeping, if you please...Do you remember what our ancestors used to say when everything went wrong? Ende desespereert nite. Whatever we do, let us never despair. So here is to good health and here is to our love for each other and here is to hope. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives

18 " IN the correspondence of Erasmus, "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Tolerance

19 " History is the mighty Tower of Experience, which Time has built amidst the endless fields of bygone ages. It is no easy task to reach the top of this ancient structure and get the benefit of the full view. There is no elevator, but young feet are strong and it can be done. "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , The Story of Mankind

20 " What poor, deluded fools these human beings are! Won't they ever learn? Of course, today they seem to do everything at a much faster rate of speed than we did in our day. They get born faster. They live faster. They eat faster. They burn out faster. But what do they gain? And you tell me that all of them can now read and write! But what do they read and what do they write? And are they any better at living in peace with each other than we were? Do they love each other any the better? Let me put it even more simply. Do they treat each other with any greater decency and tolerance than we did in our own time, when we were forever slaughtering each other for some opinion which was mere guesswork and probably always would remain so, and yet caused one half of humanity to send the other half to the gallows and the stake—and for what?...I am sorry, but even today, I don't quite know for what! "

― Hendrik Willem van Loon , Van Loon's Lives