"At the moment, neither the Spanish, the Portuguese, nor the Dutch are willing to sell. I intend to discreetly inform myself if in Africa if there is nothing to do."

"Thanks for explanations. Since Belgian nationality is useless, isn't it better to travel an African traveler who will have more authority than me? Fear of increasing financial embarrassment. Nevertheless am at the disposal of the King, but of course I will never be under the orders of a foreigner"

"A people needs air, broad horizons, an ideal which charms its imagination and makes its heart beat; reduce it to household calculations, to the politics of party interests, it will disintegrate and corrupt itself."

"I want it to be and it will be."

"It's my ruin you stipulate and you can't want it."

"My dear Mr. Banning, I am returning the 2nd sheet to you. I find this of extreme interest. You would have to read many volumes to acquire the geographical notions that you have so condensed into a few pages. I read this with great charm. You're giving the matter a nice boost. I have no comments to make. I made a small cross at the top of page 28, because I thought it was better to put "revise" instead of "revis" or "undertook" instead of "undertakes." A thousand friendships. (s) Jules Van Praet."

"For him to colonize was above all to civilize."

"Emile Banning was a young man who, like the king, had a limp and went on to create a furore as a romantic imperialist of the most dangerous sentimental kind. … Banning's liberalism was of the kind that sought to divide people into races, then formulate the true historical fate for each race, a belief that was already degenerating into a fertilizer that fueled the growth of racist fascism in Europe."

"The Christian inspiration from Chateaubriand and the love for nature underline Banning's romantic character. At the same time, Banning shared in the colonial ideology of Brialmont and Lambermont, which seemed rather based on a positivist principle: the 'struggle for life' of little Belgium. Emile Banning developed another positivist variant based on the inequality of races and peoples. Each race or people, which in the course of history had established a territory for itself, largely determined its historical fate, but could also suffer its fate. Banning thus formed a vision of history based on the organic needs of peoples. The Germanic race was at the same time the great example for Banning because of their growing self-esteem and romantic nation-building, and the great ogre, because their recent state growth could have negative territorial consequences for small Belgium."

"Emile Banning's ideology was based on "three noble principles": God, Freedom and Fatherland."

"Freedom of trade and navigation in the Congo Basin, exclusion from any differential treatment, assimilation of foreigners to nationals in civil and commercial terms, prohibition of entry rights for twenty years, condemnation of trafficking. There is only one downside: the African work does not have the international character that he would have liked."

"Honest man, great citizen, modest servant of the country, who was always in pain, rarely in the spotlight, and who has not been replaced."

"By the end of 1892, all the King's collaborators during the first and second phases of Belgian work in the Congo had therefore ceased to participate. M. van Eetvelde, who had increasingly isolated himself from them, remained alone in possession of the sovereign's confidence, with the sole program of being the passive instrument of his designs. This third phase of the administration of the state of Congo affected all signs of impending dissolution."

"The King is no longer the same; the change of character and spirit observed in him for two or three years is accentuated and makes fear of a catastrophe, at a time when he had only to let it go to be a remarkable King, perhaps to become a large figure."

"The more we increase in numbers, the more we starve and become poorer. ... Either our population will shrink, or our territory will expand."

"Belgium only does pure philanthropy."

"From a moral point of view, there is a way to whitewash negroes, and to this view Africa undoubtedly presents the largest field that can be cultivated."

"You may want to, Sire, but then you will find someone other than me to carry out such a will."

"The King isolates himself and becomes less and less accessible to our advice."

"Wherever this regime has been applied in one form or another, it has led to economic stagnation and decline and political revolt."

"Everything seems to indicate that a decisive hour has sounded in the history of the world, the hour when an almost virgin continent and ignored races will cooperate in the work of humanity."

"The desert reveals its secrets; the great mystery of interior Africa is revealed day by day."

"The doctrine of state ownership of land established since 1890 is the exact opposite of free trade, the new doctrine is reprehensible, going against both the natural rights of the indigenous people who will be deprived, and the rights of the Imperial powers as determined in the act of Berlin."

"There are only two types of states in Europe: small states, and small states that have not yet realized they are small."

"Although most western European leaders had reservations about the concept of a full European federation, a majority of them, especially among Christian Democrats, agreed that the ECSC created a foundation to build on. Even Winston Churchill, back as British prime minister after the 1950 elections, had called for a “United States of Europe,” though he had doubted that the British Commonwealth would be part of it. In 1956 a committee under Belgian foreign minister Paul-Henri Spaak set out proposals for what a year later became the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC built directly on the ECSC. It had the same member states and the same supranational approach to economic integration. But it had a much wider remit, and would, over the generation that followed, remake western Europe as a unifying economic zone."

"NATO was a triumph of organization and effort, but is was also something very new and very different. For NATO derived its strength directly from the moral values of the people it represented, from their high ideals, their love of liberty, and their commitment to peace. But perhaps the greatest triumph of all was not in the realm of a sound defense or material achievement. No, the greatest triumph after the war is that in spite of all of the chaos, poverty, sickness, and misfortune that plagued this continent, the people of Western Europe resisted the call of new tyrants and the lure of their seductive ideologies. Your nations did not become the breeding ground for new extremist philosophies. You resisted the totalitarian temptation. Your people embraced democracy, the dream the Fascists could not kill. They chose freedom. And today we celebrate the leaders who led the way—Churchill and Monnet, Adenauer and Schuman, De Gasperi and Spaak, Truman and Marshall. And we celebrate, too, the free political parties that contributed their share of greatness—the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats and Labour and the Conservatives. Together they tugged at the same oar, and the great and mighty ship of Europe moved on."

"The real father of the Atlantic Alliance was Stalin. It is he who has the right to a monument in each of our countries."