42 Quotes About Leopold-ii

You should purchase as much land as you will be able to obtain without losing one minute from all the chiefs from the mouth of the Congo to Stanley falls, i will send you more people and raw materials, and perhaps Chinese couriers.

I will give them my Congo, but they have no right to know what i did there.

I was received with an overwhelming display of military and civilian tributes, all the way to the royal palace where I was to stay, troops were lined up behind which enthusiastic people were chanting their viva, it seemed to me that a major change had come in the Belgian public opinion on the importance of the Congo, when I first went there, the Belgian newspapers spouted nothing but criticism, they were completely dumbfounded, the king was recognized as the great benefactor of the nation.

We have attacked and destroyed 28 large towns, and 3 or 4 score villages

A People which is content with its homeland and which shreds at even the shadow of a conflict lacks the characteristics of a superior race.

There are no small countries, only small minds.

Nations that renounce ambition are nations with no future.

I undertook the Congo project in the interest of Civilization and for the good of Belgium.

Only by proving that we are superior to the savages, not only through our power to kill them but through our entire way of life, can we control them as they are now, in their present stage; it is necessary for their own well-being, even more than ours. (Stanley writes this on his first expidition commissioned by King Leopold II of Belgium after describing with horror the horrible scenes of atrocities and cannibalism that take place in the Congo.)