Hendrik Willem Van Loon Quotes

Civilization is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

Although there exist in the world today some microbes of the soul, such as discrimination and aggression, science was and still is the core of progress for humanity and the continuity of civilization.

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.

Learning has freed more men than all the armies in human history.

Civilization is vastly overrated.

All human progress is preceded by new questions

This then is the age of reason.

Education is the foundation upon which we build our future.

The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don't have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That's where I'm very optimistic.

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

Cities are the greatest creations of humanity.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

There are many problems, but I think there is a solution to all these problems; it's just one, and it's education.

The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason.

Ah! destructive Ignorance, what shall be done to chase thee out of the World!

I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.

The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.

Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.

This is the great object held out by this association; and the means of attaining it is illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason which will dispell the clouds of superstition and of prejudice.

History is a race between education and catastrophe.