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 are in Europe many good generals, but they see too many things at once. I see one thing, namely the enemy's main body. I try to crush it, confident that secondary matters will then settle themselves.
The object of war is victory, the object of victory is conquest, and the object of conquest is occupation.
My downfall raises me to infinite heights.
Nothing is more destructive than the charge of artillery on a crowd.
Water, air, and cleanness are the chief articles in my pharmacy.
Knowledge and history are the enemies of religion.
When I had the honor to be a second lieutenant, I ate dry bread, but I never let anyone know that I was poor.
The greater the man, the less is he opinionative, he depends upon events and circumstances.
One can lead a nation only by helping it see a bright outlook. A leader is a dealer in hope.
I have fought sixty battles, and I have learnt nothing which I did not know at the beginning.
There is a joy in danger.
Men are ruled by toys.
The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
Since the discovery of printing, knowledge has been called to power, and power has been used to make knowledge a slave.
War is the business of barbarians.
Promptly improve your accidents.
He, who practices right, but in the hope of acquiring great renown, is very near to vice.
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.
The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it.
In revolution there are only two sorts of men, those who cause them and those who profit by them.
Public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield. There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine.
From triumph to downfall there is but one step. I have noted that, in the most momentous occasions, mere nothings have always decided the outcome of the greatest events.
Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.
The only true conquests-those that awaken no regrets- are those obtained over our ignorance.
War must be made as intense and awful as possible in order to make it short, and thus to diminish its horrors.
A beautiful woman like eyes, and a good heart; One is a beautiful thing, and other treasures.
I have only one counsel for you - be master.
Great battles are won with artillery.
It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.
I may lose a battle but I will never lose a minute.
If fifty thousand men were to die for the good of the State, I certainly would weep for them, but political necessity comes before everything else.
A society without religion is like a vessel without compass.
I like honest men of all colors.
You must not fear death, my lads; defy him, and you drive him into the enemy's ranks.
All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.
The heart may be broken, and the soul remain unshaken.
When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.
Rascality has limits; stupidity has not.
We are either kings or pawns of men
Great men are meteors, consuming themselves to light the world
It is a mistake, too, to say that the face is the mirror of the soul. The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only.
Good and decent people must be protected and persuaded by gentle means, but the rabble must be led by terror.
I know men, and I tell you, Jesus is more than a man. Comparison is impossible between Him and any other human being who ever lived, because He was the Son of God.
A people that is able to say everything, becomes able to do everything. The crowd which follows me with admiration, would run with the same eagerness were I marching to the Guillotine.
The reason I beat the Austrians is, they did not known the value of five minutes
Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes at night.
Has a man the right to kill himself? Yes, if his death harms no one and if life is an evil to him. When is life an evil? When it offers a man nothing but suffering and pain.
The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.
To negotiate is not to do as one likes.
When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.
True wisdom, in general, consists in energetic determination.
To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.
Providence is always on the side of the last reserve.
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
You don't govern men who don't have religion, you shoot them.
There is no real force without justice.
Treason is a matter of dates.
A starving army is actually worse than none.
It is only by prudence, wisdom, and dexterity that great ends are attained and obstacles overcome. Without these qualities nothing succeeds.
Public opinion is the thermometer a monarch should constantly consult.
There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.
The tools belong to the man who can use them.
We walk faster when we walk alone.
He that makes war without many mistakes has not made war very long.
Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.
The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, to punish more severely.
It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.
The worse the man the better the soldier. If soldiers be not corrupt they ought to be made so.
In my youth I, too, entertained some illusions; but I soon recovered from them.
Governments keep their promises only when they are forced, or when it is to their advantage to do so.
To command, you must first of all speak to the eyes.
When your enemy is doing something wrong, do not interrupt him.
The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.
Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.