Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes

In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Six hours' sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool, ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Policemen and prisons ought never to be the means used to bring men back to the practice of religion. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

This society [Jesuits] has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed the progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.

{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 4, 1816. Adams wrote an anonymous 4 volume work on the destructive history of the Jesuits} ~ John Adams

I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

They tell a story, probably not true, about a cap trooper who was sight-seeing in Paris. He visited Les Invalides, looked down at Napoleon's coffin, and said to a French guard there: "Who's he?"
The Frenchman was properly scandalized. "Monsieur does not know? This is the tomb of Napoleon! Napoleon Bonaparte! The greatest soldier who ever lived!"
The cap trooper thought about it. Then he asked, "So? Where were his drops? ~ Robert A. Heinlein

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

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

He that makes war without many mistakes has not made war very long. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

To be believed make the truth unbelievable. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Victory belongs to the most persevering. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable, pitiful. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

You do not get peace by shouting: Peace. Peace is a meaningless word; what we need is a glorious peace. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The bed has become a place of luxury to me! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Large legislative bodies resolve themselves into coteries, and coteries into jealousies. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

For today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

It is with artillery that war is made. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

It is not enough to give orders they must be obeyed. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The Mohammedan religion is the finest of all ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Civilization does everything for the mind and favors it entirely at the expense of the body. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Few really believe. The most only believe that they believe or even make believe. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

A victorious general must know how to employ severity, justness, and mildness by turns, if he would allay sedition or prevent it. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The fate of a Nation may sometimes depend upon the position of a fortress. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Peoples of Egypt , you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The object of war is victory, the object of victory is conquest, and the object of conquest is occupation. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Once you have made up your mind, stick to it; there is no longer any 'if' or 'but'. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

As for moral courage, it is very rare, he said, to find that kind found at 2 o'clock in the morning; that is to say, courage in the face of the unexpected. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Revolutions are like the most noxious dungheaps, which bring into life the noblest vegetables. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I have seen only yoU, I have admired only yoU, I desire only You ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Soldiers! Here is the battle you have so long desired! Henceforth victory depends on you; we have need of it. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Impossible is in the dictionary of fools ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Chess is too difficult to be a game and not serious enough to be a science or an art. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

A great European federative system alone can be favourable to the development of civilisation. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

It is astonishing what power words have over men. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

You don't govern men who don't have religion, you shoot them. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Jesus Chris was more than man. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The superior man is never in anyone's way. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

There is no man more pusillanimous than I when I am planning a campaign. I purposely exaggerate all the dangers and all the calamities that the circumstances make possible. I am in a thoroughly painful state of agitation. This does not keep me from looking quite serene in front of my entourage; I am like an unmarried girl laboring with child. Once I have made up my mind, everything is forgotten except what leads to success. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

My true glory is not to have won 40 battles ... Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories, ... But ... what will live forever, is my Civil Code. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, to punish more severely. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Whatever misanthropists may say, ingrates and the perverse are exceptions in the human species. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Europe is a molehill. All great empires and revolutions have been on the Orient; six hundred millions live there. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The more I study the world, the more I am convinced of the inability of brute force to create anything durable. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Power is founded upon opinion. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Be successful! I judge men only by the results of their actions. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

France has more need of me than I have need of France. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The most insupportable of tyrannies is that of inferiors. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I start out by believing the worst ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I feel myself driven towards an end that I do not know. As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become unnecessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me. Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything against me. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

A general must be a charlatan. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Patriotism is a word which represents a noble idea. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

It is the success which makes great men. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The most dangerous moment comes with victory. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

What I have done up to this is nothing. I am only at the beginning of the course I must run. Do you imagine that I triumph in Italy in order to aggrandise the pack of lawyers who form the Directory, and men like Carnot and Barras? What an idea! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

In order that a people may be free, it is necessary that the governed be sages, and those who govern, gods. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog.
Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The first method is that of a schemer and leads only to mediocre results; the other method is the path of genius and changes the face of the world. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

An army of lions commanded by a deer will never be an army of lions. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

To imagine that it is possible to perform great military deeds without fighting is just empty dreams. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

In war you see your own troubles; those of the enemy you cannot see. You must show confidence. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Oh well, no matter what happens, there's always death. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

When I was happy I thought I knew men, but it was fated that I should know them in misfortune only. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity ... ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

All things proclaim the existence of God. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Religion is, in fact, the dominion of the soul; it is the hope, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil. What a service has Christianity rendered to humanity! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Remember that a man, a true man, never hates. His rages and his bad moods never last beyond the present moment-like electric shocks. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one's designs to one's means. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

In war, the general alone can judge of certain arrangements. It depends on him alone to conquer difficulties by his own superior talents and resolution. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Sometimes a single battle decides everything and sometimes, too, the slightest circumstance decides the issue of a battle. There is a moment in every battle at which the least manoeuvre is decisive and gives superiority, as one drop of water causes overflow. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I made all my generals out of mud. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Every beggar shall be arrested. But to arrest a beggar merely in order to put him in jail would be barbarous and absurd. He should be arrested for the sole purpose of teaching him how to earn a living by his work. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

In statesmanship there are predicaments from which it is impossible to escape without some wrongdoing. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I drink Champagne when I win, to celebrate ... and I drink Champagne when I lose, to console myself. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Each state claims the right to control interests foreign to itself when those interests are such that it can control them without putting its own interests in danger. other powers only
recognize this right of intervening in proportion as the country doing it has the power to do it. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Diplomacy is the police in grand costume. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Orders and decorations are necessary in order to dazzle the people. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Always carry champagne! In victory You deserve it & in defeat You need it! ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

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

Men grow old quickly on the battlefield. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

A general-in-chief should ask himself several times in the day, What if the enemy were to appear now in my front, or on my right, or my left? ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Rigorous authority and justice are the kindness of kings. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

A great reputation is a great noise, the more there is of it, and the further does it swell. Land, monuments, Nations, all fall, but the noise remains, and will reach to other generations. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Music is what tell us that the human race is greater than we realize. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte