Top 867 Quotes & Sayings by Napoleon Bonaparte - Page 15

Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolution.

Republican despotism is more fertile in acts of tyranny, because everyone has a hand in it.

A new-born Government must shine and astonish - the moment it loses its éclat it falls.

What I have done up to this is nothing. I am only at the beginning of the course I must run. Do you imagine that I triumph in Italy in order to aggrandise the pack of lawyers who form the Directory, and men like Carnot and Barras? What an idea!

In a narrow sphere great men are blunderers.

It is often in the audacity, in the steadfastness, of the general that the safety and the conservation of his men is found.

I wish I could take a raincheck on June 18.1815

I cannot approve of your method of operation, you proceed like a bewildered idiot, taking not the least notice of my orders.

Prussia was hatched from a cannon-ball.

Artillery is more essential to cavalry than to infantry, because cavalry has no fire for its defence, but depends on the sabre.

You cannot drag a man's conscience before any tribunal, and no one is answerable for his religious opinions to any power on earth.

There shall be no Alps.

War,--the trade of barbarians!

So you think the police foresees and knows everything. The police invents more than it discovers.

He is almost a statesman. He lies well.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Wisdom and policy dictate that we must do as destiny demands and keep peace with the irresistible march of events.

While I live I will never resort to irredeemable paper.

A cowardly act! What do I care about that? You may be sure that I should never fear to commit one if it were to my advantage.

If it had not been for the English I should have been emperor of the East, but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find them in our way.

All Italians are plunderers.

Charges of cavalry are equally useful at the beginning, the middle and the end of a battle. They should be made always, if possible, on the flanks of the infantry, especially when the latter is engaged in front.

Each state claims the right to control interests foreign to itself when those interests are such that it can control them without putting its own interests in danger. ... other powers only recognize this right of intervening in proportion as the country doing it has the power to do it.

It is cowardice to commit suicide.

Tis a principle of war that when you can use the lightning, 'tis better than cannon.

Tragedy warms the soul, elevates the heart, can and ought to create heroes. In this sense, perhaps, France owes a part of her great actions to Corneille.

It should not be believed that a march of three or four days in the wrong direction can be corrected by a countermarch. As a rule, this is to make two mistakes instead of one.