Top 867 Quotes & Sayings by Napoleon Bonaparte - Page 4

To make yourself understood to people, one must first speak to their eyes

Better to have an open enemy, than hidden friends.

The leader's role is to define reality, then give hope

My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Domingue (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world.

Strangers are just friends waiting to happen. To become a good man, one must have faithful friends, or outright enemies.

All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.

A Government protected by foreigners will never be accepted by a free people.

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

Lies circle the earth while Truth is still trying to put on its shoes.

It is a mistake, too, to say that the face is the mirror of the soul. The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only.

Power is what they like - it is the greatest of all aphrodisiacs.

Act swiftly and vigorously, without 'buts' and 'ifs'.

Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration.

Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.

Success is the most convincing talker in the world.

Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property.

A man is known by his conduct to his wife, to his family, and to those under him.

Ability is noting without opportunity.

Machiavelli is right: one always must live with one's friends with the idea that they may turn into one's enemies. He should have said, with everyone.

A commander-in-chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order given by his sovereign or his minister when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander-in-chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall.

When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation

To extraordinary circumstance we must apply extraordinary remedies.

The art of war is to gain time when your strength is inferior.

I have noticed in every campaign that I have fought-that there is a key segment of time, somewhere between 13 and 15 minutes in which the battle is won or lost. I focus on that segment of time, and I win.

Fools have a great advantage over the wise; they are always self-satisfied.

America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations.

The most dangerous moment comes with victory.

The more I study the world, the more I am convinced of the inability of brute force to create anything durable.

Leave the Artillerymen alone, they are an obstinate lot.

Chess is too difficult to be a game and not serious enough to be a science or an art.

My mind is a chest of drawers. When I wish to deal with a subject, I shut all the drawers but the one in which the subject is to be found. When I am wearied, I shut all the drawers and go to sleep.

The strong are good, only the weak are wicked.

Muhammad was a prince; he rallied his compatriots around him. In a few years, the Muslims conquered half of the world. They plucked more souls from false gods, knocked down more idols, razed more pagan temples in fifteen years than the followers of Moses and Jesus did in fifteen centuries. Muhammad was a great man. He would indeed have been a god, if the revolution that he had performed had not been prepared by the circumstances.

Promptly improve your accidents.

To live, is to suffer; and the honest man is always fighting to be master of his own mind.

Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.

Speeches pass away, but acts remain.

The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.

Opportunities? I make opportunities.

My success and everything good that I have done, I owe to my mother.

There is no place in a fanatic's head where reason can enter.

Those who have changed the universe have never done it by changing officials, but always by inspiring the people.

Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure.

All the women in the world would not make me lose an hour.

Great men grow tired of contentedness.

Put your iron hand in a velvet glove.

Great men are never cruel without necessity.

I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.

A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

The worse the man, the better the soldier.

Every beggar shall be arrested. But to arrest a beggar merely in order to put him in jail would be barbarous and absurd. He should be arrested for the sole purpose of teaching him how to earn a living by his work.

A beautiful woman like eyes, and a good heart; One is a beautiful thing, and other treasures.

In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it!

Give Me a Turkish Army. I will Conquer world.

Champagne! In victory, one deserves it; in defeat one needs it.

To be believed make the truth unbelievable.

The only victory over love is flight.

The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.

The Jesuits are a MILITARY organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is power - power in its most despotic exercise - absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms - and at the same time the greatest and most enormous of abuses.

Remember, gentlemen, what a Roman emperor said: The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet.