Napoleon Quotes

“the emperor’s two chief ministers were detected in a plan to replace Bonaparte by Murat, the emperor subjected Talleyrand to a lengthy and public dressing down in front of an astonished court. His parade-ground language was shocking, as in his tirade to Whitworth—he called Talleyrand “merde en bas-de-soie” (a shit in silk stockings)—and from that day to this, no one knows whether Bonaparte’s loss of temper was deliberate or not.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“When Bonaparte ordered the pope to come to Paris to crown him as emperor, the Italian party among the cardinals overruled the Austrian party and encouraged him to accept. The argument went: “After all, we are imposing an Italian family on the barbarians, to govern them. We are revenging ourselves on the Gauls.” But this soon became a bad joke.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“Not interested in food or drink, he ate his meals, if he had any choice in the matter, in ten minutes and never caroused. No one ever saw him drunk.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“What characterized him most of all was the force, flexibility and constancy of his attention. He can work eighteen hours at a stretch on one or on several subjects. I never saw him tired. I never found him lacking in inspiration, even when weary in body, nor when violently exercised, nor when angry.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“Bonaparte was a man who, when he was in his cradle, had been given by the Good Fairy gifts beyond the imagination of most men. But she had denied him things that most people, however humble, take for granted—the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood, or right and wrong.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“It was left to a British colonel, Henry Shrapnel, to invent what was to become for generations the most effective antipersonnel shell, and to the Royal Ordnance at Woolwich to start work on rockets.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“He took Gaza, then Jaffa, where, fearing trouble from his 4,500 prisoners, he ordered them all slaughtered, which was done by bayonet thrusting or drowning, to save ammunition. Many women and children suffered in this atrocity, probably the worst of all Bonaparte’s war crimes.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“The Revolution was a lesson in the power of evil to replace idealism, and Bonaparte was its ideal pupil.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“Bonaparte has had more books written about him than any other individual, with the sole exception of Jesus Christ.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“Bonaparte learned the hard way that military rule, or rule by military men, works only (if at all) in emergencies for brief periods. In a sense, then, the whole Napoleonic Empire was an emergency entity, built to blaze but not to last.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“Bonaparte himself set an example of speed. He was often seen flogging not only his own horse but that of his aide riding alongside him. His consumption of horsepower was unprecedented and horrifying. In the pursuit of speed by his armies, hundreds of thousands of these creatures died in their traces, driven beyond endurance. Millions of them died during his wars, and the struggle to replace them became one of his most formidable supply problems.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“(Bonaparte was the first dictator to produce fake election figures.)”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“In effect, then, the Revolution created the modern totalitarian state, in all essentials, if on an experimental basis, more than a century before it came to its full and horrible fruition in the twentieth century.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“In Denmark in the 1780s, for instance, prison and law reforms were carried through, poor relief established, land reform introduced, feudal labor services abolished, the slave trade outlawed, outmoded tariffs removed, and commerce liberated, all without the assistance of the mob and without a single riot or political execution.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“Warfare, from being a means to an end, became an end in itself, and Bonaparte, having once unsheathed his sword, found it impossible to lay it down for long. He ended by being no nearer his goal, and no safer, than his last victory—thus inviting inevitable nemesis.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“The book made him famous—he was known as “Corsica Boswell”—and it was widely read in Europe. Among his readers was the young Bonaparte. It gave him ideas.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life

“The totalitarian state of the twentieth century was the ultimate progeny of the Napoleonic reality and myth.”
― Paul Johnson, Napoleon: A Life