Best quotes by Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte
French military and political leader
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. He was the de facto leader of the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814 and again in 1815. Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars. He won most of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, building a large empire that ruled over continental Europe before its final collapse in 1815. He was one of the greatest military commanders in history, and his wars and campaigns are studied in military schools worldwide. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy has endured, and he has been one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders in world history.
Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica not long after its annexation by the Kingdom of France, and his family "occupied that social penumbra encompassing the haute bourgeoisie and the very minor nobility." He supported the French Revolution in 1789 while serving in the French army, and tried to spread its ideals to his native Corsica. He rose rapidly in the Army after he saved the governing French Directory by firing on royalist insurgents. In April 1796, he began his first military campaign against the Austrians and their Italian allies, scoring a series of decisive victories and becoming a national hero. Two years later, he led a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power. He engineered a coup in November 1799 and became First Consul of the Republic. Intractable differences with the British meant that the French were facing the War of the Third Coalition by 1805. Napoleon shattered this coalition with decisive victories in the Ulm Campaign, and a historic triumph at the Battle of Austerlitz, which led to the dissolving of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1806, the Fourth Coalition took up arms against him because Prussia became worried about growing French influence on the continent. Napoleon quickly knocked out Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, then marched the Grande Armée deep into Eastern Europe, annihilating the Russians in June 1807 at Friedland, and forcing the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to accept the Treaties of Tilsit. Two years later, the Austrians challenged the French again during the War of the Fifth Coalition, but Napoleon solidified his grip over Europe after triumphing at the Battle of Wagram.
Hoping to extend the Continental System (his embargo against Britain), Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula and declared his brother Joseph the King of Spain in 1808. The Spanish and the Portuguese revolted with British support in the Peninsular War, which lasted six years, featured brutal guerrilla warfare, and culminated in a defeat for Napoleon's marshals. Napoleon launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The resulting campaign witnessed the catastrophic retreat of Napoleon's Grande Armée and encouraged his enemies. In 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a Sixth Coalition against France. A chaotic military campaign culminated in a large coalition army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. The coalition invaded France and captured Paris, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April 1814. He was exiled to the island of Elba, between Corsica and Italy. Meanwhile, in France, the Bourbons were restored to power. However, Napoleon escaped from Elba in February 1815 and took control of France, "without spilling a drop of blood" as he wished. The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which ultimately defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. The British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821 at the age of 51. Napoleon had an extensive impact on the modern world, bringing liberal reforms to the numerous territories that he conquered and controlled, especially the Low Countries, Switzerland, and large parts of modern Italy and Germany. He implemented fundamental liberal policies in France and throughout Western Europe.
Napoleon Bonaparte quotes by category:
To have good soldiers, a nation must always be at war.
My business is to succeed, and I’m good at it. I create my Iliad by my actions, create it day by day.
There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.
Space we can recover; time never.
In war you see your own troubles; those of the enemy you cannot see. You must show confidence.
I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.
Be successful! I judge men only by the results of their actions.
In war as in love, to bring matters to a close, you must get close together.
Women are nothing but machines for producing children.
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
A good sketch is better than a long speech.
Oh well, no matter what happens, there's always death.
Generals who save troops for the next day are always beaten.
The most desirable quality in a soldier is constancy in the support of fatigue; valor is only secondary.
One is more certain to influence men, to produce more effect on them, by absurdities than by sensible ideas.
Give Me a Turkish Army. I will Conquer world.
There is no such thing as an accident, only a failure to recognise the hand of fate
Who saves his country violates no law.
Champagne! In victory, one deserves it; in defeat one needs it.
Men take only their needs into consideration - never their abilities.
We should always go before our enemies with confidence, otherwise our apparent uneasiness inspires them with greater boldness.
Love is the idler's occupation, the warrior's relaxation, and the sovereign's ruination.
The secret of great battles consists in knowing how to deploy and concentrate at the right time.
A general must be a charlatan.
Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
We often get in quicker by the back door than by the front.
The secret of war lies in the communications.
In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.
Remember, gentlemen, what a Roman emperor said: The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet.
Force is the law of animals, men are ruled by conviction.
A great people may be killed, but they cannot be intimidated.
Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.
Fools have a great advantage over the wise; they are always self-satisfied.
Clever policy consists in making nations believe they are free.
Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration.
I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.
Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.
The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.
Great men grow tired of contentedness.
The superior man is never in anyone's way.
If you know a country's geography, you can understand and predict its foreign policy.
To be believed make the truth unbelievable.
The only victory over love is flight.
Machiavelli is right: one always must live with one's friends with the idea that they may turn into one's enemies. He should have said, with everyone.
Vengeance is without foresight.
It's not the size of the army but the power within the army.
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
The Jesuits are a MILITARY organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is power - power in its most despotic exercise - absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms - and at the same time the greatest and most enormous of abuses.
Speeches pass away, but acts remain.
Put your iron hand in a velvet glove.
Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use made of them.
To extraordinary circumstance we must apply extraordinary remedies.
The future destiny of a child is always the work of the mother
The more I study the world, the more I am convinced of the inability of brute force to create anything durable.
Generals are not to be too scrupulous.
All the women in the world would not make me lose an hour.
The worse the man, the better the soldier.
Great men are never cruel without necessity.
Power is what they like - it is the greatest of all aphrodisiacs.
A Government protected by foreigners will never be accepted by a free people.
Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.
Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure.
Lies circle the earth while Truth is still trying to put on its shoes.
My success and everything good that I have done, I owe to my mother.
It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.
The most dangerous moment comes with victory.
One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.
All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.
Chess is too difficult to be a game and not serious enough to be a science or an art.
There is no place in a fanatic's head where reason can enter.
Leave the Artillerymen alone, they are an obstinate lot.
Better to have an open enemy, than hidden friends.
Those who are free from common prejudices acquire others.
Success is the most convincing talker in the world.