Quotes about Hannibal

22 Sourced Quotes

The military principles of Caesar were those of Hannibal, and those of Hannibal were those of Alexander — to hold his forces in hand, not to be vulnerable at any point, to throw all his forces with rapidity on any given point.

Napoleon I of France

Weigh Hannibal: how many pounds will you find in that great general?

It was Karl Pearson, a man with an unquenchable ambition for scholarly recognition and the kind of drive and determination that had taken Hannibal over the Alps and Marco Polo to China, who recognized the power in Edgeworth's formulations of Galton's ideas. Pearson lacked Galton's originality and Edgeworth's depth of understanding, but it was his zeal, with a vital assist from G. Udny Yule, that created the methodology and sold it to the world.

Stephen Stigler

How few successful men are interesting! Hannibal, Alcibiades, with Raleigh, Mithridates, and Napoleon, who would compare them for a moment with their mere conquerors?

Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham

Hannibal knew better how to conquer than how to profit by the conquest; and Napoleon was more skilful in taking positions than in maintaining them. As to reverses, no general cart presume to say that he may not be defeated; but he can, and ought to say, that he will not be surprised.

Charles Caleb Colton

In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it.

Said by Dr Hannibal Lecter:

I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner.

If Paris were missing, he'd want the same guys looking for him. Seriously, the only team capable of getting better results would be Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Hannibal

Most of the original group [of elephants] succumbed to the climate, and he [Hannibal] was always begging Carthage for more, but the people at home were stingy. They would ask if he thought they were made of elephants and what he had done with the elephants they sent before. Sometimes, when he hadn't an elephant to his name, he would manage to wangle a few from somewhere, a feat which strikes me as his greatest claim to our attention.

Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him.

This is a sworn treaty made between us, Hannibal … and Xenophanes the Athenian … in the presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece.

Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B. C., but not before or since.

Footnote

And he [Hannibal] probably believed, up to the very end, that everything might still come out right if he only had a few you-know-whats.

I get onstage now with more attitude at fifty-seven than I had when I was twenty. When I was twenty, my attitude was kind of like, "Yeah, yeah…I'm a big rock star." Now, when I get onstage, I go up there, and I am the Moriarty of rock. I am the consummate villain. I am the Hannibal Lector of rock, and I play it like that. Alice just seems like an arrogant bastard or villain who is making the audience feel as though they are lucky to be there when in reality that is exactly the opposite of my personality. With Alice though…it is great to play him or portray him as an Alan Rickman type character who is very condescending. That's what makes him fun to watch — he's Captain Hook.

If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.

Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki...

The forces of Hannibal, Drake and Napoleon moved at best with the horses' gallop or the speed of wind on sail. Now, aviation brings a new concept of time and distance to the affairs of men. It demands adaptability to change, places a premium on quickness of thought and speed of action.
Military strength has become more dynamic and less tangible. A new alignment of power has taken place, and there is no adequate peacetime measure for its effect on the influence of nations. There seems no way to agree on the rights it brings to some and takes from others.

Charles Lindbergh

You know how to vanquish, Hannibal, but you do not know how to profit from victory.

Whenever a thousand or so of his men would fall off an Alp, he [Hannibal] would tell the rest to cheer up, the elephants were all right. If someone had given him a shove at the right moment, much painful history might have been avoided.

Man, some open doors were not welcoming, and that was so the case here—less hi-how're-ya, more come-in-so-your-skin-can-be-used-to-make-a-super-hero-cape-for-one-of-Hannibal-Lecter's-patients.

Hamilcar also told Hannibal about elephants and how you must always have plenty of these animals to scare the enemy. He attributed much of his own success to elephants and believed they would have won the First Punic War for him if things hadn't gone slightly haywire; for the war had turned into a naval affair. But even when the fighting was on land, the Romans did not scare nearly so well as expected. The Romans had learned about elephants while fighting Pyrrhus, whose elephants defeated him in 275 B. C., and even before that, in Alexander's time, King Porus had been undone by his own elephants. Thus, if history had taught any one thing up to that time, it was never to use elephants in war.

You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but not how to use it.