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Hendrik Willem van Loon
(14 Jan 1882 - 11 Mar 1944)
Dutch-American writer and journalist who was the first winner of the Newberry Medal for his children's book, The Story of Mankind (1921). His engaging book interpreted the arts and humanities. In his writing, he popularized history as if he enjoyed it, but with a lack of sufficient scholarship to endure.
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Science Quotes by Hendrik Willem van Loon (3 quotes)
A few drops of science will often disinfect an entire barrel full of ignorance and prejudice.
— Hendrik Willem van Loon
In The Story of America (1921, 1934)
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
Quote appears in Henry Wysham Lanier, The Golden Book Magazine (Feb 1933), 17, 10.
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
In The Story of America (1921). As cited in David Blatner, Spectrums: Our Mind-boggling Universe from Infinitesimal to Infinity (2012), 24.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
