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:
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.
I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
A man is known by his conduct to his wife, to his family, and to those under him.
Love is the occupation of the idle man, the amusement of a busy one, and the shipwreck of a sovereign.
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.
The strong are good, only the weak are wicked.
To make yourself understood to people, one must first speak to their eyes
Opportunities? I make opportunities.
Imagination rules the world.
The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.
Ability is noting without opportunity.
A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
Muhammad was a prince; he rallied his compatriots around him. In a few years, the Muslims conquered half of the world. They plucked more souls from false gods, knocked down more idols, razed more pagan temples in fifteen years than the followers of Moses and Jesus did in fifteen centuries. Muhammad was a great man. He would indeed have been a god, if the revolution that he had performed had not been prepared by the circumstances.
America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations.
The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.
A commander-in-chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order given by his sovereign or his minister when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander-in-chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall.
Those who have changed the universe have never done it by changing officials, but always by inspiring the people.
I have noticed in every campaign that I have fought-that there is a key segment of time, somewhere between 13 and 15 minutes in which the battle is won or lost. I focus on that segment of time, and I win.
When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation
I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.
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.
On victory, you deserve beer. On defeat, you need it.
Strangers are just friends waiting to happen. To become a good man, one must have faithful friends, or outright enemies.
Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property.
The leader's role is to define reality, then give hope
Act swiftly and vigorously, without 'buts' and 'ifs'.
Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost.
The Bible is not merely a book-it is a living power. . . . Nowhere as in the Bible can be found such a series of beautiful ideas and admirable maxims which pose before us like the battalions of a celestial army. . . . The soul can never go astray while it has this book for its guide.
A leader is a dealer in hope.
Terrorism, War & Bankruptcy are caused by the privatization of money, issued as a debt and compounded by interest.
The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.
The Mohammedan religion is the finest of all.
Never tell your enemy he is doing the wrong thing.
When people cease to complain, they cease to think.
Impatience is a great obstacle to success; he who treats everything with brusqueness gathers nothing, or only immature fruit which will never ripen.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.
You think you are too intelligent to believe in God. I am not like you.
Great men are meteors designed to burn so that earth may be lighted.
One must learn to forgive and not to hold a hostile, bitter attitude of mind, which offends those about us and prevents us from enjoying ourselves. One must recognize human shortcomings and adjust himself to them rather than to be constantly finding fault with them.
To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.
Die young, and I shall accept your death-but not if you have lived without glory, without being useful to your country, without leaving a trace of your existence: for that is not to have lived at all.
No one but myself can be blamed for my fall. I have been my own greatest enemy-the cause of my own disastrous fate.
Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men;.... Consequently, it may be repressed with impunity. Equality, on the other hand, pleases the masses.
Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
Half of the people in the world are below average.
How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death.
You can not lead a battle if you think you look silly on a horse.
A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.
A woman laughing is a woman conquered.
God is on the side with the best artillery
If I were to give liberty to the press, my power could not last three days.
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Every hour of lost time is a chance of future misfortune.
History is written by the winners.
An order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood.
He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.
Adversity is the midwife of genius
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.
The Jews are the master robbers of the modern age.
Men who have changed the world never achieved their success by winning the chief citizens to their side, but always by stirring the masses.
I see only my objective - the obstacles must give way.
In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.
Moses has revealed the existence of God to his nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent.
Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power.
The amateurs discuss tactics: the professionals discuss logistics
I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.
One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.
A true man hates no one.
An army of lions commanded by a deer will never be an army of lions.
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.
Give me an educated mother, I shall promise you the birth of a civilized, educated nation
In war, as in prostitution, amateurs are often better than professionals.
In politics stupidity is not a handicap.