Napoleon Quotes

“I lived like a bear, in a little room, with books for my only friends . . . These were the joys and debaucheries of my youth.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“More books have been written with Napoleon in the title than there have been days since his death in 1821.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by other people: it is reflection, meditation.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great

“The future is a matter of contempt for those with courage. - Napoleon Bonaparte.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Men can be unjust towards me, my dear Junot,’ he wrote to his faithful aide-de-camp, ‘but it suffices to be innocent; my conscience is the tribunal before which I call my conduct.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“If you would make war,' he would say to to General d'Hedouville in December 1799, 'wage it with energy and severity; it is the only means of making it shorter and consequently less deplorable for mankind.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“His favourite entertainments were intellectual rather than social; he went to public lectures and visited the observatory, the theatre and the opera. ‘Tragedy excites the soul,’ he later told one of his secretaries, ‘lifts the heart, can and ought to create heroes.’24”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“I am very happy to see the enemy wish to avoid our coming to him. – Napoleon”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Essentially a compromise between Roman and common law, the Code Napoléon consisted of a reasoned and harmonious body of laws that were to be the same across all territories administered by France, for the first time since the Emperor Justinian. The rights and duties of the government and its citizens were codified in 2,281 articles covering 493 pages in prose so clear that Stendhal said he made it his daily reading.38 The new code helped cement national unity, not least because it was based on the principles of freedom of person and contract. It confirmed the end of ancient class privileges, and (with the exception of primary education) of ecclesiastical control over any aspect of French civil society.39 Above all, it offered stability after the chaos of the Revolution.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“He appealed to the pride of those he would conquer but gave them no doubt as to the consequences of resistance. ‘The French army loves and respects all peoples, especially the simple and virtuous inhabitants of the mountains,’ read a proclamation to the Tyrolese that month. ‘But should you ignore your own interests and take up arms, we shall be terrible as the fire from heaven.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Rule one on page one of the book of war, is: “Do not march on Moscow.” ’ Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, House of Lords, May 1962”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Nations slaughter each other for family quarrels, cutting each other’s throats in the name of the Ruler of the Universe, knavish and greedy priests working on their imagination by means of their love of the marvellous and their fears.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard,’ he once said. ‘When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another. Do I wish to sleep? I simply close all the drawers, and there I am – asleep.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“I have beaten the Russian and Austrian army commanded by the two emperors. I am a little tired.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“If you make war,’ he would say to General d’Hédouville in December 1799, ‘wage it with energy and severity; it is the only means of making it shorter and consequently less deplorable for mankind.’79”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“There is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Nothing is lost while courage remains.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Despite hating mobs and technically being a nobleman, Napoleon welcomed the Revolution. At least in its early stages it accorded well with the Enlightenment ideals he had ingested from his reading of Rousseau and Voltaire.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great

“Nothing short of military defeat demoralizes a country so totally as hyper-inflation, and the Directory,”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“The reading of history very soon made me feel that I was capable of achieving as much as the men who are placed in the highest ranks of our annals.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“One must never ask of Fortune more than she can grant.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“In war, men are nothing, but one man is everything,”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“When asked why he had not taken Frederick the Great’s sword when he had visited Sans Souci, he replied, ‘Because I had my own.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Edward Gibbon famously wrote in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that ‘The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.’18 ‘The idea of God is very useful,’ Napoleon said, ‘to maintain good order, to keep men in the path of virtue and to keep them from crime.’19 ‘To robbers and galley slaves, physical restrictions are imposed,’ he said to Dr Barry O’Meara on St Helena, ‘to enlightened people, moral ones.’20”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Vaunting ambition can be a terrible thing, but if allied to great ability – a protean energy, grand purpose, the gift of oratory, near-perfect recall, superb timing, inspiring leadership – it can bring about extraordinary outcomes.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Among Berthier’s many qualities was a diplomatic nature so finely attuned that he somehow managed to persuade his wife, the Duchess Maria of Bavaria, to share a chateau with his mistress Madame Visconti (and vice versa).”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“Napoleon’s rise through the ranks was therefore by no means unique given the political and military circumstances of the day.73 Still, his progress was impressive: he had spent five and a half years as a second-lieutenant, a year as a lieutenant, sixteen months as a captain, only three months as a major and no time at all as a colonel. On December 22, 1793, having been on leave for fifty-eight of his ninety-nine months of service – with and without permission – and after spending less than four years on active duty, Napoleon was made, at twenty-four, a general.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great

“His constant references to the ancient world have the effect of giving ordinary soldiers a sense of their lives.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life

“By the time Napoleon had spent five years at Brienne and one at the École Militaire he was thoroughly imbued with the military ethos, which was to stay with him for the rest of his life and was to colour his beliefs and outlook deeply. His acceptance of the revolutionary principles of equality before the law, rational government, meritocracy, efficiency and aggressive nationalism fit in well with this ethos but he had little interest in equality of outcome, human rights, freedom of the press or parliamentarianism, all of which, to his mind, did not. Napoleon’s upbringing imbued him with a reverence for social hierarchy, law and order, and a strong belief in reward for merit and courage, but also a dislike of politicians, lawyers, journalists and Britain.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great