Top 100 Quotes About Napoleon Bonaparte
#1. Europeans are forever the offspring of Machiavelli, trapped in a historical rollercoaster that can bring us a monarchy-toppling French Revolution and then a few years later Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor.
Loretta Napoleoni
#2. History is a creative process (or as Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "a set of lies agreed upon"). The world happens as it happens, but we construct what we remember and what we forget. And people will eventually do that to us, too.
Chuck Klosterman
#3. I once read that there are more biographical works about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other man in history.
Michael Dirda
#4. Neurotics, proceed with delusions of grandeur. Napoleon Bonaparte, take the lead. Jesus Christ, bring up the rear. Simulate severe depression. Non-communicative with repressed hostility.
Samuel R. Delany
#5. It was 1953, and I was still at school. I'd borrowed a silent French film from the library for my 9.5mm projector. It was by Jean Epstein, and it was awful. So I rang the library and asked if they had anything else. They said they had 'Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution.'
Kevin Brownlow
#6. Political scientists have often described Gaullism as a sort of Bonapartism. I myself have occasionally compared Sarkozy to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Max Gallo
#7. Space we can recover, time never. Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821
Robert Greene
#8. Force cannot organize anything.In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the spirit by which I mean the civil and religious institutions of a nation.
Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#12. There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#13. A king is sometimes obliged to commit crimes; but they are the crimes of his position.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#15. Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#16. Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#22. Pure politics is merely the calculus of combinations and of chances.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#24. The Allied Powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, he, faithful to his oath, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, to quit France, and even to relinquish life, for the good of his country.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#25. War must be made as intense and awful as possible in order to make it short, and thus to diminish its horrors.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#26. The monster has escaped Elba!" "The tyrant has landed at Cannes!" "Bonaparte meets the troops." "Napoleon approaches Paris." "His Imperial Majesty has entered the capital.
David Frum
#27. A man is not dependent upon his fellow creature, when he does not fear death.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#28. My success and everything good that I have done, I owe to my mother.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#29. True character stands the test of emergencies. Do not be mistaken, it is weakness from which the awakening is rude.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#30. If you build an army of 100 lions and their leader is a dog, in any fight, the lions will die like a dog. But if you build an army of 100 dogs and their leader is a lion, all dogs will fight as a lion
Napoleon Bonaparte
#31. Conscription is the vitality of a nation, the purification of its morality, and the real foundations of all its habits
Napoleon Bonaparte
#32. Once you have made up your mind, stick to it; there is no longer any 'if' or 'but'.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#33. An army of lions commanded by a deer will never be an army of lions.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#34. In a conquered country benevolence is not humanitarianism. It is a general political axiom that a conqueror must not inspire a good opinion of his benevolence until he has demonstrated that he can be severe with malefactors.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#35. A well-composed song strikes the mind and softens the feelings, and produces a greater effect than a moral work, which convinces our reason, but does not warm our feelings, nor effect the slightest alteration in our habits
Napoleon Bonaparte
#36. Men who have changed the world never achieved their success by winning the chief citizens to their side, but always by stirring the masses.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#37. A constitution should be framed so as not to impede the action of government, nor force the government to its violation.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#38. The only true conquests-those that awaken no regrets- are those obtained over our ignorance.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#40. What are the conditions that make for the superiority of an army? Its internal organization, military habits in officers and men, the confidence of each in themselves; that is to say, bravery, patience, and all that is contained in the idea of moral means.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#42. It is an ambassador's duty to stand up for his nation's foreign policy in any era and under any government whatsoever. Ambassadors are, in the full meaning of the term, titled spies.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#46. A cowardly act! What do I care about that? You may be sure that I should never fear to commit one if it were to my advantage.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#48. The great art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#49. My mind is a chest of drawers. When I wish to deal with a subject, I shut all the drawers but the one in which the subject is to be found. When I am wearied, I shut all the drawers and go to sleep.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#52. Chess is too difficult to be a game and not serious enough to be a science or an art.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#54. If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering an undertaking, I have meditated long and have foreseen what might occur. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unexpected by others; it is thought and preparation
Napoleon Bonaparte
#57. France is invaded; I am leaving to take command of my troops, and, with God's help and their valor, I hope soon to drive the enemy beyond the frontier.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#58. Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#59. Ordinary men died, men of iron were taken prisoner: I only brought back with me men of bronze.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#60. Nothing is more arrogant than the weakness which feels itself supported by power.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#61. Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#62. When a man is a favorite of Fortune she never takes him unawares, and, however astonishing her favors may be, she finds him ready.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#63. Democracy may become frenzied, but it has feelings and can be moved. As for aristocracy, it is always cold and never forgives.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#64. It is not set speeches at the moment of battle that render soldiers brave.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#65. God has given me the will and the force to overcome all obstacles.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#66. It is not necessary to bury the truth. It is sufficient merely to delay it until nobody cares.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#67. Love is the occupation of the idle man, the amusement of a busy one, and the shipwreck of a sovereign.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#68. How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#69. A nation recruits men more easily than it can retrieve its honour.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#71. In order not to be astonished at obtaining victories, one ought not to think only of defeats.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#74. Civilization does everything for the mind and favors it entirely at the expense of the body.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#76. Life is strewn with so many dangers, and can be the source of so many misfortunes, that death is not the greatest of them.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#77. Man loves the marvelous. It has an irresistible charm for him. He is always ready to leave that with which he is familiar to pursue vain inventions. He lends himself to his own deception.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#79. Society cannot exist without inequality of fortunes and the inequality of fortunes could not subsist without religion. Whenever a half-starved person is near another who is glutted, it is impossible to reconcile the difference if there is not an authority who tells him to.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#81. The stupid speak of the past, the wise of the present, and fools of the future.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#82. When you determine to risk a battle, reserve to yourself every possible chance of success, more particularly if you have to deal with an adversary of superior talent, for if you are beaten, even in the midst of your magazines and your communications, woe to the vanquished!
Napoleon Bonaparte
#83. In the last analysis, one must be a military man in order to govern. It is only with boot and spurs that one can govern a horse.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#85. To have a right estimate of a man's character, we must see him in misfortune.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#86. In a great nation, the majority are incapable of judging wisely of things.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#87. My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Domingue (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#88. Impatience is a great obstacle to success; he who treats everything with brusqueness gathers nothing, or only immature fruit which will never ripen.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#89. A true master of politics is able to calculate, down to the smallest fraction, the advantages to which he may put his very faults.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#90. I want the whole of Europe to have one currency; it will make trading much easier.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#92. To listen to the interests of all marks an ordinary government; to foresee them marks a great government.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#94. One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#96. All the great captains have performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of art
by adjusting efforts to obstacles.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#98. The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#99. A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.
Napoleon Bonaparte
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