Hendrik Willem Van Loon Quotes

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.

What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It’s the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically.

It's strange how few of the world's great problems are solved by people who remember their algebra.

Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world.

Maxims are sharp-edged half-truths.

There are a lot of truths in this world. When it rains it pours. It's always darkest before the dawn. He who smelt it dealt it.

Intelligence, it might be said, has caused our troubles; but it is not unintelligence that will cure them. Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world

Realize that if you can instantly create a problem, you can just as quickly and easily create a solution.

Listen to the people on the ground. They have all the solutions in the world.

The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one - America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

When it’s too good, you do it over again. Too good is too easy. If it’s too easy you have to worry. If you’re not lying awake at night worrying about it, the reader isn’t going to, either. I always know that when I get a good night’s sleep, the next day I’m not going to get any work done. Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It’s not all inspirational.

If I had to write a book, I could not find anything in the world worth saying - as is indeed the case with many voluminous authors.

Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art.

Solving problems—actually solving them, not just claiming you do—solving perceived, urgent problems, is a surefire way to get the world to beat a path to your door.

That's the way I feel about the world: there are certain problems that can only be dealt with that way - going out and doing them. As ugly a truth as that is, I do think it's the truth about the world.

The best eraser in the world is a good night's sleep.

I'm always presenting myself with problems to solve as a writer.

The question of engineering should be of interest not only to those of us who are engineers, but to the entire public which lives in an engineering world

It is always possible to approach a goal by a detour.

What [Donald] Trump is essentially saying is what has always been the case: America is the solution to the problems of the world. But to [Barack] Obama and Hillary [Clinton] and many on the left, America's the problem. America and its superpower status is the problem in the world.