Belgium Quotes

“I like to say that while antimatter may seem strange, it is strange in the sense that Belgians are strange. They are not really strange; it is just that one rarely meets them.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

“When you walk into a chocolate store, suddenly the most difficult decision you will ever have to make in your life, is which chocolates to pick! It is pure torture! Especially when you are in Belgium surrounded by Belgian chocolates!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Belgium is the best remedy against patriotism.”
― Geert van Istendael

“I've always liked Belgian waffles, but I must say, I didn't think I would one day be having Belgian waffles in Belgium! I just sort of POOF found myself there and there I was with a gigantic Belgian waffle in my hands, standing on a sidewalk in Belgium!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host,
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in hell”
― Vachel Lindsay, The Congo and Other Poems

“I begin my reign with the desire to put myself at the service of all Belgians. I will work for it in perfect agreement with the government and in accordance with the constitution.”
― King Philippe of Belgium

“The wealth of our country and our institutional system lies particularly in the fact that our diversity is strength. Whenever we find a balance between unity and diversity, the strength of Belgium is precisely to give meaning to our diversity.”
― King Philippe of Belgium

“I am a great admirer of Leopold II, although I think that he should be destroyed in the memory of mankind and reduced to the state in which I presented him in my play, namely a dirty goblin who as soon as he does something of any interest must be raised in order to become a fully-fledged human being.”
― Hugo Claus

“It was no coincidence that dictated my choice. Peace was definitively signed, the country's political constitution in full force, but Belgium was still looking for its ways in the commercial field. That’s where the point was.”
― Auguste Baron Lambermont

“With regard to the industrial and commercial relations that China seeks to create in Europe, and the agents that it would like to recruit there for internal works or its administration, Belgium can offer it resources equal to those of the States of first order. In addition, the country's situation, its essentially peaceful character, precludes any possibility of political conflict.”
― Auguste Baron Lambermont

“Feelings of humanity and commiseration erupt on their own when we deliberate with our feet in the blood.”
― Auguste Baron Lambermont

“Never have I had the impression of such a moral and civic downfall. In no country, not even the last of the last, what is happening here would be possible.”
― Auguste Baron Lambermont

“There is no such thing as exclusively national thinking. The work intended to benefit science and humanity necessarily interests everyone, but Belgium and its Sovereign will indirectly derive honor and great moral benefit from it; in this sense, there is a truly and usefully Belgian thought. We do not have a view of colonial acquisition, but over time trade will undoubtedly find its value there as well.”
― Auguste Baron Lambermont

“It is the King who supports the State from his pocket, to challenge the State for the products of his estates is to force the King from his pocket to cover deficits, a good part of which will come from the free abandonment of the land. 'exploitation of State estates to commercial houses to fatten them on a voluntary basis, houses which not only do nothing for the progress of civilization but which have delayed it with all their might and would like to delay it further in order to be States, tyrants in the State.”
― Edmund Van Eetvelde

“I want to show those who are going to peddle that I am the man of all jobs, that at least I am not, just to keep my place. And I hold it all the more so as I can put up with the current boycott, a few months, but that I could not bend my life to it forever.”
― Edmund Van Eetvelde

“Personally, I have no other ambition than to devote to the service of the King all the goodwill and effort of which I will still be capable. I know it's a small thing.”
― Edmund Van Eetvelde

“Having a proper sense of her duty, and the means to carry it out, Belgium has mapped out her own course, and intends to keep to it. It entails a policy of humanity and progress. To a nation whos only aim is justice, the mission of colonization can only be a mission of high civilization: a small nation proves it greatness by carrying it out faithfully. Belgium has kept her word.”
― Albert I of Belgium

“In short, there is a great deal of stagnation among the settlers and the medium-sized enterprises. The native there is often mistreated, exploited and has no medical care. In the Menteau farm, we observed a considerable number of varicose ulcers, which hardly exists at UM and La Forminière. There is no dispensary on this farm. The small settler can succeed in the Congo, one can doubt it, he lives by the exploitation of the native whom he makes work like a convict and moreover, he takes back his meager salary by selling him bad goods. The settler is often doubled as a trafficker, they complement each other, the system truck. Besides, the whole colonial edifice rests on the negro's shoulders. He alone is the source of profit, thanks to the excessive exploitation of which he is the object. In a colony, where there are few transport routes, where those that exist demand exorbitant prices, where there is little or no mechanical handling, no workhorse, only the degradation of the workforce - work can maintain the commercial level of the cost price. Large companies have the merit, through their tools, their medical assistance, their works of providing more treatment and of not wasting manpower.”
― King Albert I of Belgium

“The British people realise that they are fighting for the hegemony of the Empire. If necessary we shall continue the war single-handed.”
― King Albert I of Belgium

“The negro workers are still unaware of the force that can give them union organization; happy industrialists.”
― King Albert I of Belgium

“The prevailing opinion at court was that the founding of a colony was beyond the strength of the Sovereign of a small state and that he would swallow up his private fortune, unable to create anything lasting. The King sought for the execution of his designs collaborators possessed of the faith which he himself had and which lifts mountains.”
― Eugène Napoléon Beyens

“But it would not be reckless to say that from the start the King dreamed of founding a Belgian colony. Many times I have heard him say, when the Independent State emerged from its swaddling clothes like a newborn baby trying to walk: "I work there for Belgium".”
― Eugène Napoléon Beyens

“The right to direct military offensive operations or to make war on the natives, but gives them only the power to requisition, for the maintenance or establishment of order, the armed force which may be either in or without the concession, subject to the reservation that the officers of the State shall retain the command of the troops.”
― Théophile Wahis

“I pray believe me when I express now, not only for myself, but for my fellow countrymen in this part of Africa, pur very sincere appreciation of your efforts on behalf of the general community efforts to promote goodwill among all and to bring together the various elements of our local life.”
― Théophile Wahis

“Let us refrain from referring to the Congo as a Belgian colony, let us avoid writing of ‘Belgian misrule.”
― Edmund Dene Morel

“Congo reformers like Morel, much to the annoyance of Hochschild, advocated either German or British colonization of the area (Congo). Morel’s view, according to Hochschild, speaking ex cathedra from the hallowed seat of modern California, “seems surprising to us today” and was among his “faults” and “political limitations.” Quite the opposite. The moment the Belgians colonized the Congo in 1908, a miraculous improvement was noted on all fronts. Seeking to debunk colonialism, Hochschild’s book demonstrates the opposite. This is the first and biggest lie at the heart of King Leopold’s Ghost.”
― Bruce Gilley, King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

“Hochschild is at pains to convince the reader that anyone opposing the EIC was good, whether brutal slave trader, inveterate cannibal, fetish priest, or ethnic-cleansing warlord. His treatment of the 1895 rebellion by native soldiers at a military camp named Luluabourg in the southern savannah strains to portray the rebels as noble savages pining for freedom and a return to pastoral life. In his telling, the Belgian commander Mathieu Pelzer was a “bully” who “used his fists” and thus got his comeuppance at breakfast with a knife to the throat. Actually, Pelzer had nothing to do with it. The rebels were former soldiers for a black slave king. The EIC had brought them to the southern camp to reintegrate them as government soldiers. But their loss of royal prerogatives to whore, steal, and maim caused them to rebel. The group never exceeded 300 (Hochschild speculates that it reached 2,500) and petered out in the northern jungles in 1897, a rag-tag criminal gang gone to seed.”
― Bruce Gilley, King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

“Hochschild repeats the urban legend that Léopold burned all the EIC documents, going “to extraordinary lengths to try to erase potentially incriminating evidence.” Quite the opposite: Léopold was proud of the EIC and went to extraordinary lengths to leave behind an extensive record. The testimony of his military aide that Hochschild cites about “burning the State archives” and turning “most of the Congo state records to ash” was a misunderstanding: what the aide saw burning were ruined and unreadable papers among the thousands of documents that came back in crates from the Congo in 1908. Léopold left behind 14 trunks filled with his personal letters and financial statements. Everything was carefully cataloged in “a vast room that looked like a post office,” the aide recalled. Some of it went missing in the turmoil of World War II before resurfacing in the basement of a house in 1983. Just last year, researchers at the Royal Museum for Central Africa who work on the EIC archives published a new book, The Congo Free State: What Could Archives Tell Us?”
― Bruce Gilley, King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.

“Et land uten kultur har ikke livets rett som land. Det eneste unntaket her er Belgia.”
― Knut Nærum, Norsk litteraturhistorie fritt etter hukommelsen

“In Brussels between 1909 and 1914, Louis Mascré sculpted away for Belgium’s Royal Academy of Science, creating a plaster cranium, a mother and child, the upper body of an elder. At a time when Belgium was brutalizing the Congo, the country’s Royal Academy compared Africans to apes and also depicted Neanderthals as simian rather than caveman-like.”
― Stefanos Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins