Quote by Desiderius Erasmus: “Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.”

You do not defeat ignorance or fear by fighting them directly. You replace them by bringing in something better. This is the Erasmian faith in education: if you genuinely illuminate, the darkness has nowhere to go. It is an optimist's theory of change.

Erasmus wrote during the height of the Renaissance and just before the Protestant Reformation split European Christianity. His intellectual work was driven by the belief that access to original texts and genuine education could reform both the Church and society, without the violent rupture that would come with Luther's Reformation.

Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and the most celebrated scholar of his age. His works, including In Praise of Folly and his critical edition of the Greek New Testament, combined scholarship with wit and pushed for church reform from within.