Quotes about Napoleon I of France

132 Sourced Quotes

America remained a land of promise for lovers of freedom. Even Byron, at a moment when he was disgusted with Napoleon for not committing suicide, wrote an eloquent stanza in praise of Washington.

Bertrand Russell

The greatness of action includes immoral as well as moral greatness--Cortes and Napoleon, as well as Luther and Washington.

Edwin Percy Whipple

Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Such instances of the almost infinite unpredictability of man are known to social scientists, but they are no more affected by them than the asylum inmate is by being told that he is not Napoleon.

Anthony Standen

Maybe Napoleon was wrong when he said we were a nation of shopkeepers... Today England looked like a nation of goalkeepers.

How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.

Divine persons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon, they are victory organized.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I will not become a Napoleon nor an Alexander, and labour for my own ambition; but I will labour for freedom and for the moral well-being of man.

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

Ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity…is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.

Arthur Conan Doyle

The Allies had made war on Napoleon as a tyrant and an oppressor of nations; yet once they had got him out of the way, they did him the favor of representing him as the torchbearer of the French Revolution. They did him the further favor of repeating his mistakes and besting him at them.

J. Christopher Herold

Nobody is enjoying the result of civilization created by atheists like Ravana, Kansa, Aurangzeb, Napoleon or Hitler. Everything is in oblivion and this teaches us the lesson that the materialistic plans of the present age will also meet with the same fate after a lapse of 50 years. Therefore blind materialism does not bring in any permanent relief in the world.

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Not badly, considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.

David Lloyd George

When Tardieu asked him why he always gave in to Lloyd George:

What do you expect when I'm between two men of whom one [Lloyd George] thinks he is Napoleon and the other [Woodrow Wilson] thinks he is Jesus Christ?

Georges Clemenceau

Well, if you create your own reality, you no longer live in a real world. It used to be a joke when we were young about the insane and I am told that there were a fair number in institutions who thought of themselves as Napoleon. And that was a departure from reality, creating their own reality. That is what our world is doing today.

Rousas John Rushdoony

Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big - bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.

Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.

It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150 years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

If we go on to cast a look at the fate of world historical personalities... we shall find it to have been no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labor and trouble; their whole nature was nothing but their master passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered, like Casear; transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

It is due to him that the Roman concepts of public duty and service are still a living force among us. Historians have denied him the name of genius which they grant readily to Alexander and Julius and Napoleon; but if it be not genius to re-make and re-direct the world by a courageous realism and supreme powers of character and mind, then the word has no meaning in human speech..

Napoleon has humbugged me, by God; he has gained twenty-four hours' march on me.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

In one week I'll be thirty. Three-zero. Older than my Dad was when I was born. Older than Napoleon was when he... did something that was probably extremely impressive at the time – I'm not a historian. I'm a composer. Sorry, a "promising young composer." I should have kids of my own by now, a career, but instead I've been "promising" for so long I'm afraid I'm starting to break the fucking promise.

Jonathan Larson

Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have yet not done him justice. Try him by that test to which he sought in vain to stimulate the vulgar and selfish spirit of Napoleon; class him among the men who, to compare and seat themselves, must take in the compass of all ages; turn back your eyes upon the records of time; summon from the creation of the world to this day the mighty dead of every age and every clime — and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one be found, who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take precedence of Lafayette?

John Quincy Adams

He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.

Benjamin Harvey Hill

An intelligent man said that the world felt Napoleon as a weight, and that when he died it would give a great oof of relief. This is just as true of Byron, or of such Byrons of their days as Kipling and Hemingway: after a generation or two the world is tired of being their pedestal, shakes them of with an oof, and then—hoisting onto its back a new world-figure—feels the penetrating satisfaction of having made a mistake all its own.

Randall Jarrell

Anyone who feels the urge to undertake such a task must dedicate himself for his labors as he would prepare for a pilgrimage to distant lands. He must spare no time or effort, fear no earthly power or rank, and rise above his own vanity or false modesty in order to tell, in accordance with the expression of the Code Napoléon, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Carl von Clausewitz

Napoleon's armies always used to march on their stomachs shouting: 'Vive l'Intérieur!'

[Napoleon has now] surpassed... Alexander & Caesar, not to mention the great advantage he has over them in the Cause he fights in.

Charles James Fox

Only Napoleon did more than I have done. But I am definitely taller.

Silvio Berlusconi