# Belgium

Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium (Royaume de Belgique in French, Koninkrijk België in Dutch), is a federal monarchy in Western Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Netherlands, to the east by Germany and Luxembourg, to the south and southwest by France, and to the northwest by the North Sea. Belgium is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters as well as those of several other major international organizations such as NATO

## Quotes

* My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with a low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery.
** Doctor Evil in the Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
* Rory: "Lorelai Gilmore". Nope, doesn't sound model-y enough. You need something that stands out more. How about "Waffle"? We could call you Waffle and say you're from Belgium.
** Rory in Gilmore Girls, Like Mother, Like Daughter (2001), season 2 Episode 2
* Kirk: Another Armenia, Belgium … the weak innocents who always seem to be located on a natural invasion route.
** Captain Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series, "Errand of Mercy" (1967), season 1 episode 27.
* Ray: I do know a Belgium joke! Okay, what's Belgium famous for? Chocolates and child abuse and they only invented the chocolates to get to the kids.
** Ray in In Bruges.
* "Belgium" is the rudest word in the universe, which is "completely banned in all parts of the Galaxy, except in one part, where they could not possibly know what it means."
** The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
* They're the Canada of France.
** Craig Ferguson in 2008 at the 94th annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.
* He said when he left that he wanted to repair the relationship, and that is very crucial. We need their help in Iraq. The more we can entice others to help us, the less of a target we could be.
** Barbara Boxer's response to a question from CNN's Wolf Blitzer about what advice she would give President George W. Bush as he visited Belgium that day (February 20, 2005).
* The years of slavery are past, The Belgian rejoices once more; Courage restores to him at last, The rights he held of yore. Strong and firm his grasp will be, Keeping the ancient flag unfurled, To fling its message on the watchful world: For king, for right, for liberty.
** Alexandre Dechet, La Brabançonne (Belgian National Anthem), written during the Revolution of 1830. Music by François van Campenhout; translation by Florence Attenborough, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 66.
* "'If in Belgium they continue to eat chocolate, enjoy life and parade as great liberals and democrats while not taking account of the fact that some of the Muslims who are there are organising acts of terror, they will not be able to fight against them"
** Yisrael Katz, Israeli Minister of Transportation and Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy, following the 2016 Brussels bombings
* The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on.
** Mairead Maguire in The Disturbing Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex, Common Dreams, (14 October 2014)
* 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.
** Philippe of Belgium, as quoted in "Divided Belgium has a new King Philippe", Telegraph (21 July 2013)
* But perhaps we are wrong. Perhaps our memory deceives us. Dr. Goebbels and his Propaganda Machine have their own version of what happened twenty-five years ago. To hear them talk, you would suppose that it was Belgium that invaded Germany! There they were, these peaceful Prussians, gathering in their harvests, when this wicked, Belgium – set on by England and the Jews – fell upon them; and would no doubt have taken Berlin, if Corporal Adolf Hitler had not come to the rescue and turned the tables. Indeed, the tale goes further. After four years of war by land and sea, when Germany was about to win an overwhelming victory, the Jews got at them again, this time from the rear. Armed with President Wilson’s Fourteen Points they stabbed, we are told, the German armies in the back, and induced them to ask for an armistice, and even persuaded them, in an unguarded moment, to sign a paper saying that it was they and not the Belgians who had been the ones to begin the War. Such is history as it is taught in topsy-turvydom. And now it is holiday again, and where are we now? Or, as you sometimes ask in the United States – where do we go from here?
** Winston Churchill, A Hush Over Europe, 8 August 1939
* Americans reflexively believe that 'Had Germany occupied the United States, nearly all of us would have joined an armed resistance to the Nazis. That's what I thought, too, when I was 16. But that reflects a hopelessly naive view, both of what the world looked like to most people after the Nazis had conquered Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and France, and of what it actually meant to take up arms against an occupying power'.
** Charles Kaiser, "What Americans forget about French resistance" (7 May 2015), Cable News Network, Atlanta, Georgia.
* We've just heard from the Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many point a finger of blame at the DRC and other poor countries for their poverty. Yet we don’t seem to remember, or want to remember, that starting around 1870, King Leopold of Belgium created a slave colony in the Congo that lasted for around 40 years; and then the government of Belgium ran the colony for another 50 years. In 1961, after independence of the DRC, the CIA then assassinated the DRC’s first popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, and installed a US-backed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, for roughly the next 30 years. And in recent years, Glencore and other multinational companies suck out the DRC’s cobalt without paying a level of royalties and taxes. We simply don’t reflect on the real history of the DRC and other poor countries struggling to escape from poverty. Instead, we point fingers at these countries and say, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you govern yourselves properly?”
** Jeffrey Sachs', Speech at the UN Food Systems Pre-summit, Speech transcript (October 2021)
* The law of Belgium is the same as that of France, except that the “grande natural isation” can only be conferred by act of the legislature.
** Ibid. p. 53. Letter from Mr. Prevost. Swiss consul.
* Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
** Woodrow Wilson, 14 Points, 1918
* Brutally attacked by Germany which had entered into the most solemn engagements with her, Belgium will defend herself with all of her strength against the invader. In these tragic hours which my country is undergoing, I am addressing myself to Your Excellency, who so often has demonstrated towards Belgium an affectionate interest, in the certainty that you will support with all of your moral authority the efforts which we are now firmly decided to make in order to preserve our independence.
** Leopold III, The King of the Belgians (Leopold III) to President Roosevelt, Brussels, May 10, 1940. Translation is that printed in the Department of State Bulletin, May 11, 1940, p. 492.
* On July 31, 1950, I accepted to hand over the royal powers to my son. It was my will to renounce the throne for good as soon as it turned out that all Belgians would have united themselves around Prince Baudouin. I now establish that this unanimity has been achieved. The last words I wish to say as king of the Belgians will strongly indicate that the future of the fatherland depends on your national solidarity, I swear to agree to you, God protect Belgium and our Congo.
** Histories: De Nacht van Laken (1997 Documentary about the Royal Question) Speech was given by Leopold III on July 16, 1951, on the day of his abdication.
* I have no other desire than to leave Belgium bigger, stronger and more beautiful.
** Pierre Vercauteren: A king unjustly maligned. (Page 18) Leopold II on the evening of his accession in 1865 confided to the baron Lambermont. Léopold II, Count Louis de Lichtervelde (p.55).
* It is not the first time that Belgium has had to undergo a dangerous ordeal. But never has the situation been more serious than today! … Freedom, honor, the very existence of the fatherland is at stake.
** Leopold II, Het hele Verhaal, Johan Op De Beeck Horizon, 2020 ISBN 9789463962094 King Leopold II In a 1870 speech to the Belgian Parliament as a reaction to the growing threat of war between Prussia and France.
* Small country, small people.
** King Leopold's Ghost Leopold II, Hair to the Belgian throne, 1866.
* If I do not promise Belgium a splendid government like that which founded its independence, nor a great King like him whom we mourn, then at least i believe to be a Belgian King in heart and soul, whose whole life belongs to the country.
** Bulletin Officiel de Congo Belge - Années 1908 et 1909, page 174. King Leopold II in a speech on 17 december 1865.
* Belgium is a boiler that needs valves.
** All the King's Men' A search for the colonial ideas of some advisers and "accomplices" of Leopold II (1853-1892). (Hannes Vanhauwaert), 6. Baron Auguste Lambermont (1819-1905), The uncrowned king of economic liberalism Leopold I once said to Lambermont. DE ROBIANO, A. Baron Lambermont: His life and his Work. Brussel, 1905, 59.
* Belgium does only pure philanthropy.
** All the King's Men' A search for the colonial ideas of some advisers and "accomplices" of Leopold II (1853-1892). (Hannes Vanhauwaert), Emile Banning (1836-1898): The Don Quichotte of the ‘liberal civilization’ in Congo, A romantic associate of Leopold II. ROEYKENS, A. Les débuts de l’œuvre africaine de Léopold II, 210.
* This is no proof that our Belgian people are not as foolish as some think, and that there are few in Belgium who voluntarily play soldier.
** The Mexican adventure of Maximilian and Charlotte through Belgian eyes. The Mexican Empire in the Newspaper Press (1864-1867). (Wim Bouw), Belgian volunteers for their princess Maximilian's Mexico was in conflict with the United States and the newspapers feared that Belgium would be dragged into a possible war. The lack of volunteers was reported triumphantly to her readership. Het Handelsblad, 20 augustus 1864.
* Cuba and Belgium are both countries of modest size, surrounded by large, powerful and often hostile powers.
** Our Man in Havana and Other Facts about the Belgo-Cuban Connection
* Belgium had no prior history in the slave trade, nor of African slaves. Léopold could fight against slavery without any hint of hypocrisy, even of the ahistorical type advanced by Hochschild. And it was slavery, not rubber operations, that contemporary observers viewed as the biggest threat to the people of the Congo.
** Prof. Bruce Gilley, King Hochschild’s Hoax, The American Conservative, 17 april, 2023.

## See also

* Belgae
* Brabant Revolution
* United States of Belgium
* Belgian Revolution
* Monarchy of Belgium
* Religion in Belgium
* Belgian Colonial Empire
* Belgian Congo

## External links

* Official site of Belgian monarchy.
* Official site of the Belgian federal government.
* Belgium at UCB Libraries GovPubs.
* Belgium information from the United States Department of State.
* Portals to the World from the United States Library of Congress.
* Belgium profile from the BBC News.
* FAO Country Profiles: Belgium.
* Statistical Profile of Belgium at the Association of Religion Data Archives.
* Key Development Forecasts for Belgium from International Futures.
* Official Site of the Belgian Tourist Office in the Americas and GlobeScope.
* Authority control: WorldCat search