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:
I marvel that whereas the ambitious dreams of my self, Caesar, and Alexander should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant-Jesus-s hould be able to stretch His hands across the centuries and control the destinies of men and nations.
Ambition never is in a greater hurry that I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.
Every private in the French army carries a Field Marshall wand in his knapsack.
War justifies everything.
Unite for the public safety, if you would remain an independent nation.
There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Reconnaissance memoranda should always be written in the simplest style and be purely descriptive. They should never stray from their objective by introducing extraneous ideas.
Where the Government is weak, military sway prevails.
There is no class of people so hard to manage in a state, as those whose intentions are honest, but whose consciences are bewitched.
A great Nation should have a fixed Government, so that the death of one man should not overturn it.
In order that a people may be free, it is necessary that the governed be sages, and those who govern, gods.
A man's palate can, in time, become accustomed to anything.
It strengthens the bonds between nations to have the same civil laws and the same monetary system.
You cannot stop me; I spend thirty thousand men a month.
As a rule it is circumstances that make men.
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.
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.
They wanted me to be a Washington.
Never interfere with an enemy in the process of destroying himself.
The nature of Christ's existence is mysterious, I admit; but this mystery meets the wants of man. Reject it, and the world is an inexplicable riddle; believe it, and the history of our race is satisfactorily explained.
When I was happy I thought I knew men, but it was fated that I should know them in misfortune only.
Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.
What my enemies call a general peace is my destruction. What I call peace is merely the disarmament of my enemies. Am I not more moderate than they?
In war it is not men, but the man who counts.
Conquest has made me what I am, only conquest can maintain me.
To attach no importance to public opinion, is a proof that you do not merit its suffrage.
In political administration, no problem is ever simple. It can never be reduced to the question whether a certain measure is good or not.
The army is the true nobility of our country.
The bed has become a place of luxury to me! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world.
Without cavalry, battles are without result.
An army which cannot be reenforced is already defeated.
If I had not been defeated in Acre against Jezzar Pasha of Turk. I would conquer all of the East.
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
The merit of Mahomet is that he founded a religion without an inferno.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other. They are worse than ever when, at the termination of their punishment, they return to society.
All things proclaim the existence of God.
Necessity dominates inclination, will, and right.
I want the whole of Europe to have one currency; it will make trading much easier.
Few really believe. The most only believe that they believe or even make believe.
I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good.
If I were an Englishman, I should esteem the man who advised a war with China to be the greatest living enemy of my country. You would be beaten in the end, and perhaps a revolution in India would follow.
Which is heavier: a soldier's pack or a slave's chains?
Laws which are consistent in theory often prove chaotic in practice.
I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.
But it is at home and not in public that one should wash ones dirty linen. [Fr., Car c'est en famille, ce n'est pas en public, qu'un lave son linge sale.]
My dominion ends where that of conscience begins.
The life of a citizen is the property of his country.
A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.
What is a throne? - a bit of wood gilded and covered in velvet. I am the state- I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public - people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France.
In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter.
History paints the human heart.
The human race is governed by its imagination.
I know he's a good general, but is he lucky?
The logical end to defensive warfare is surrender.
There must be Religion. Otherwise the poor would murder the rich.
What is the government? Nothing, unless supported by opinion.
In war, as in politics, no evil - even if it is permissible under the rules - is excusable unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything beyond that is a crime.
I engage and after that I see what to do.
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.
Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.
When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.
I may have had many projects, but I never was free to carry out any of them. It did me little good to be holding the helm; no matter how strong my hands, the sudden and numerous waves were stronger still, and I was wise enough to yield to them rather than resist them obstinately and make the ship founder. Thus I never was truly my own master but was always ruled by circumstances.
Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success.
Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space.
Mankind are in the end always governed by superiority of intellectual faculties, and none are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute, and associated with men of science, I knew what I was doing: I was sure of not being misunderstood by the lowest drummer boy in the army.
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.
This accession of territory affirms forever the power of the United States, and I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride.
When Monarchs abuse the rights with which they have been invested by the confidence of the people, and bring down upon their heads the calamity of war, the people have the right to withdraw their allegiance.
I may be accused or rashness, but not sluggishness.
Cossacks are the best light troops among all that exist. If I had them in my army, I would go through all the world with them.
The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast.
What is the future? What is the past? What are we? What is the magic fluid that surrounds us and conceals the things we most need to know? We live and die in the midst of marvels.
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!
Never lose sight of this maxim, that you should establish your cantonments at the most distant and best protected point from the enemy, especially where a surprise is possible. By this means you will have time to unite all your forces before he can attack you.