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

“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

“I am very happy to see the enemy wish to avoid our coming to him. – Napoleon”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Nothing short of military defeat demoralizes a country so totally as hyper-inflation, and the Directory,”
― 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

“He has been described as combining a theoretical love of mankind with a practical contempt for men. Well-meaning, impressionable and egotistical, he was so good at playing a part that Napoleon later dubbed him ‘the Talma of the North’, and on another occasion ‘a shifty Byzantine’. He claimed that he would happily abolish serfdom if only civilization were more advanced, but never genuinely came close to doing so, any more than he ever carried through the codification of Russian law that he promised in 1801 or ratified the liberal constitution he had asked his advisor Count Mikhail Speranski to draw up a few years later. Although La Harpe had initially enthused Alexander about Napoleon’s reforms as First Consul, when the tutor returned from Paris he was so disillusioned that he wrote a book, Reflexions on the True Nature of the First Consulship for Life, that described Napoleon as ‘the most famous tyrant the world has produced’, which had a great effect on the young tsar. Since Alexander ultimately did more than any other individual to bring about Napoleon’s downfall, his emergence on to the European scene with his father’s assassination was a seminal moment.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

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

“Between 1793 and 1797, the French would lose 125 warships to Britain’s 38, including 35 capital vessels (ships-of-the-line) to Britain’s 11, most of the latter the result of fire, accidents and storms rather than French attack.15 The maritime aspect of grand strategy was always one of Napoleon’s weaknesses: in all his long list of victories, none was at sea.”
― Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great