Hendrik Willem Van Loon Quotes

What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.

The future is hidden by a dark impenetrable veil, and yet we struggle to pierce through it.

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

There are many things that I don't understand.

All that we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.

What you know is always a little less attractive to you than what you don't know.

Our ignorance will always remain greater than our knowledge.

Uncertainty means that we do not have a complete description of the world which we fully believe to be true.

The less we know the more we suspect

You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything and know that we don't, that's the important part.

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me.

Sometimes there are no answers.

I always think it's not what we know that's terrifying; it's what we don't know. That's sort of pervasive with everything in life.

Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.

How little we know of what there is to know.

Things are really weird around here, and most of us don't know everything. Half of everything.

All I know is a door into the dark

As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.

How little do the wisest among us know of that which is so important to us all.

We cannot conceive how the Foetus is form'd in the Womb, nor as much as how a Plant springs from the Earth we tread on ... And if we are ignorant of the most obvious things about us, and the most considerable within our selves, 'tis then no wonder that we know not the constitution and powers of the creatures, to whom we are such strangers.

But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which thequickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.

But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

I don't really have a metaphor for how I write, but it kinda feels like chipping away at a big dark object that I can't really see.