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....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.
Hendrik Willem van LoonAny 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 LoonIn such a case the writer is apt to have recourse to epigrams. Somewhere in this world there is an epigram for every dilemma.
Hendrik Willem van LoonThe foundation for a new era was laid but yesterday. The human was given its first chance to become truly civilised when it took courage to question all things and made 'knowledge and understanding' the foundation upon which to create a more reasonable and sensible society of human beings.
Hendrik Willem van Loon