non-fiction-authors-from-belgium

"The national culture of Belgium is a synthesis, if I may so call it, where one finds the genius of two races — the Romance and the Germanic — mingled, yet modified by the imprint of the distinctively Belgian. It is in that very receptivity — the fact that it has absorbed and unified the best elements of Latin and Teutonic civilization — that the originality of the Belgian national culture resides."

"Through her behind the scenes work and steady influence Alice Drakoules was seen as a 'spiritual mother' of the humanitarian movement"

"The emancipation of woman should be accompanied by hostility towards deeds of violence, and by the spread of the instinct of pity and mercy. Let women discountenance every act of cruelty under whatever disguise, or upon whatever pretence, and it will become impossible, or at all events much rarer than now."

"The sentiment that spares the sheep and the deer will not sacrifice men."

"The savage is not a sportsman, hunting is his business, not his amusement; his excuse is, that he acts from necessity."

"The passion for 'sport,' the killing and wounding industries, is no other than a relic of the past struggle for existence, destined to be regarded with horror under higher and happier civilization."

"As is the language, so is the idea."

"Only the worshippers of the old world creed based on the maxim that 'might is right' could attempt to justify their position."

"Man by nature is not a carnivorous but a frugivorous animal, and … a diet composed of fruits, pulses, grains and nuts contains all that is necessary for the maintenance of Force and Caloric."

"Strange as it is, in this age of so-called humanity and enlightenment, that society, when brought face to face with the grave accusation of indifference to life, to the terrible wrongs inflicted on the harmless non-human races, is yet content to go on as before; it does not trouble itself in the slightest degree to stop the barbarisms and frightful sufferings inflicted upon what it is pleased to term 'the brutes' and 'the beasts;' it does not concern itself to enquire into the unquestionable atrocities practised in the rearing, transport and slaughter of the countless thousands of harmless victims who are daily sacrificed for the pleasures of the palate."

"Man at present has no just claim to regard himself as the worthy Head of the animal world."

"Picturing to yourselves all that is meant by the slaughter-house… I ask you if it is possible to reconcile the idea of it… with the idea of progress, of refinement, and of gentleness (or humanity)? In my opinion they are irreconcileable."

"If we judge from the construction of the human body, the natural food of man is not flesh-meat, but fruits, roots, cereals, and vegetables; that, in a word, man is not carnivorous, but frugivorous."

"The immense work which is executed by oxen, horses, mules, elephants, and camels, is convincing proof of the strength-giving properties of vegetable food."

"Vegetable substances contain all the elements necessary for the nourishment of man, and for the production of force and caloric."

"There are in London at this time thirty Vegetarian Restaurants, all doing a very good business; this will give you an idea of the hold which food reform already has in our country."

"If, instead of being fed upon flesh food, a savage dog is given bread and vegetables, in a short space of time he becomes a changed being, gentle and docile."

"Of the 3rd millennium BC , Marc van de Mieroop confessed ‘the chronology is confused owing to the Sumerian king list’s practice of listing contemporaneous dynasties as successive.’"

"I am still in debt to the taxman. A little. 17.5 billion."

"No, but i do note that every minute of your life the state is around the corner, you only get into your car, you have to put on your seatbelt, decree of the state, you can only drive 120 km per hour, decree of the state, but you can pay 33% VAT, at the petrol pump you can pay 80% to the state, on every cigarette you have again state, I smoke 7 packs a day so I maintain the state."

"The time is not far off when a complete Herge page will cost 10 or 20 million francs."

"The fact is that the implementation of the Truman doctrine elevated the United States, in a first phase, during the Cold War, to the police of Western Europe, in a second phase, after the Fall of the Wall, to the police of the whole world, - a police escaping any parliamentary control. So is this the global power that George W. Bush and his think tanks were so proud of?"

"Launching the Marshall Plan was certainly not as philanthropic as it was presented. The reconstruction aid was first and foremost inspired by the fear that without it, another war with the Soviet bloc would be inevitable. Moreover, the Americans knew only too well that in Western Europe the reconversion from a war economy to a normal economy was still in full swing, so Europe did have to import massively from the United States, which of course greatly benefited the US trade balance."

"How many times did we hear statements along the lines of: "Scientific research showed that ..." or "It has been scientifically proven that ..." In doing so, people assume that science is always true. But how reliable is science? A lot of what we call science, and we accept as true, is neither true nor false, and belongs to metaphysics. For a short time (following the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus), it looked like we could make a razor-sharp distinction between reliable scientific statements and unreliable metaphysical statements. But Wittgenstein himself challenged that distinction with the posthumous publication of his Philosophical Investigations. Still later, (predominantly French) postmodern philosophy picked up the proposition that there is less truth contained in general science than in a simple literary poem. The days of reliable general theories seemed hopelessly over. Is that so? Has cognitive thinking become impossible? The following is a reflection. The era we live in, at least in the Western world, is called postmodernity. It is characterised by great uncertainty and a sense of increasing insecurity. Uncertainty surrounds unanswered questions related to the future of the planet, to the sustainability of energy supplies, to job security, to family stability, to declining social control, to the increase in the number of asylum seekers, to the existence of a god, and so on. Insecurity is linked to war, to terrorism, to crime. The idea is to study all these phenomena scientifically. But how sure am I that science is still reliable?"

"The higher the degree of postmodernity, the more citizens have to lose and the greater the uncertainty regarding their future (will I still be able to pay off my mortgage tomorrow, pay my rent, will my wife or husband not run off with someone else, will I still get a decent pension, will I still give my children and grandchildren an ecologically liveable world). Also, the greater the degree of postmodernity the greater the spending on the military, police and judiciary to fight crime, terrorism, or war)."

"Postmodernity is a way of life that has spread throughout post-industrial western society in Europe, North America, Japan and Australia at least since 1980. It is characterised by families getting smaller and smaller, by a sharp rise in divorce rates and fewer marriages, by more and more out-of-wedlock births, by a meteoric rise in computer and internet use, by a sharp rise in drug use, by more and more time spent on gaming, by a false sense of increasing freedom, by a rise in wealth, and so on."

"Postmodernity is, for the time being, the most recent form of society to manifest itself at the time of the anomic technical division of labour. It is the successor to modernity which was itself the successor to traditional society. Postmodernity should not be confused with postmodernism, which was a period code in art, also a (sad) way of philosophical thinking that spread mainly between 1970 and 1995 in France - an idiotic way of thinking that suggested that in science, general theories are no longer possible and that there is more cognitive truth hidden in a poem than in the complete Standard Model of Physics. Postmodern philosophy, viewed with some recul, has been a feat of pompous nonsense, if only because it denied that in human science general theories are impossible, as if the seminal work of Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann had no cognitive significance."

"Under the influence of Marxism, a sixth form of division of labour also emerged in world history, the nomic technical division of labour. It was first introduced in the Soviet Union in 1917 and disappeared with the fall of the Wall in 1989. Working people were led to believe that it was a form of nomic division of labour that had arisen spontaneously and was not enforced by the government. But in reality, it was not communism; on the contrary, it was state capitalism. On paper, communism still prevails in the People's Republic of China, but only because paper is very willing there (no wonder, since paper was invented in China precisely). Hard forms of communism continued for a short time after the Fall of the Wall in Cuba and Albania, but have since disappeared there too. Only in totally isolated North Korea has the nomic technical division of labour persisted to this day. It certainly did not lead to a death of the state, as Marx predicted, but to a crushing state apparatus controlled by the unscrupulous power clique around the revered Leader."

"I have been driving 300 kilometres per hour all my life and now I meet an accident at 30 per hour. Surely that is godawful."

"I smoke a lot, yes. The proverbial Turk could take a punt on it. Et alors? I am not afraid of dying. If I have to, I have to."

"Vive la république d’Europe!"

"I have been an asshole, but an interesting one. I have made horrendous mistakes and made wrong decisions."

"I did the math once: I must have smoked about 3.8 million cigarettes in my lifetime. I easily smoked eight packs a day, one cigarette after another. That's more than two hundred cigarettes a day."

"I know that in my life I have bought 128 or 138 Ferraris, a lot of paintings, 7 castles I have never seen, 2 planes and an $89 million yacht."

"I am no longer afraid of death. A longing for death even arises. Still, I would like to be able to say before the end of the year: enough is enough."

"If a woman showing her ass and tits is already a Public Figure, it has come a long way."

"I want to talk about it with people who know something about it. You are politicians, you know nothing."

"I did learn in the meantime that there are two categories of people: those who are for me and those who are against me. I don't think there is a middle species."

"I always start from a truth that I dress up and sugarcoat. For example, if I've been to a restaurant and it was quite expensive, I say, 'The four of us went for dinner and we consumed a hundred thousand francs.'"

"When the taxman had taxed everything, I was forced to drive a Rolls. It was terrible. Such a raggedy car that broke down every five minutes. I could barely manage 200 kilometres per hour with it. I eventually sold it, because I would rather walk than drive that Rolls."

"I regret everything. But if I had done things differently, it would never have been as compelling."

"There are three reasons why I believe the current, ongoing monetary initiatives have a better chance of success than ever before: First and foremost, these money innovations are not attacking the official money system. What they do instead is complement the conventional money system, providing new tools that can operate in parallel with it, without replacing it. That is why I call them 'complementary currencies', and not, 'alternative' ones."

"However, is this what best serves our world today? I submit that those aspects of our monetary system that met the objectives of another time and age are now inadequate for the challenges facing us during an Information Age. This is particularly true in light of the fact that working solutions are already underway, with thousands of communities around the world taking their own money initiatives. They are creating new wealth, while solving social problems without taxation or regulation. They are empowering self-organising communities, while increasing overall economic and social stability. Finally, they enable the creation of very necessary social capital without attaching the established capital formation process."

"In pre-Victorian England the world was oblivious of pollution, greenhouse effects and overpopulation. Nationalism, competition, endless growth and colonisation were encouraged. These values are what shaped the monetary and banking systems we inherited."

"We allocate a great portion of our physical, emotional, and mental energy to getting, keeping, and spending money - but how many of us really know what money is or where it comes from? Money is created when banks lend it into existence."

"Money or lack thereof, is a fundamental component of our lives. It is not, however, just the lack of money that is precipitating present trends or preventing us from addressing current challenges. Rather, it is the limited functionality of our money and monetary system that is a major force behind our present disorders. Many of the problems we face, and the solutions we seek, reside within the architecture of our current monetary system and in our understanding of, and our agreements around, money."

"Money is like an iron ring we've put through our noses. We've forgotten that we designed it, and it's now leading us around. I think it's time to figure out where we want to go--in my opinion toward sustainability and community--and then design a money system that gets us there."

"The Future of Money is a compendium report about solutions already implemented by thousands of people around the world, who have had the courage to first identify, then directly address the underlying mechanism of their problems. Their initiatives to date are small-scale, but I see them as seedlings which - if allowed to grow - have the potential to provide effective and permanent solutions by which conditions for mankind and other living systems may improve dramatically within our own lifetimes."

"Why have our efforts, the countless billions of pounds and dollars spent all over the world, the many treaties enacted and initiatives taken, not stopped the destruction of our environment, nor effectively addressed a myriad of social issues? Is it possible that our attentions and efforts are misdirected? Or are the challenges and issues facing our world today being fueled by an even deeper systematic problem? The short answer to this last question is yes."

"In this new Millennium, we are being challenged by four megatrends that are converging upon us over the next twenty years, namely:"