Napoleon Quotes

1. "But even friendship like our heroes'Exist no more; for we've outgrownAll sentiments and deem men zeroes--Except of course ourselves alone.We all take on Napoleon's features,And millions of our fellow creaturesAre nothing more to us than tools...Since feelings are for freaks and fools.Eugene, of course, had keen perceptionsAnd on the whole despised mankind,Yet wasn't, like so many, blind;And since each rule permits exceptions,He did respect a noble few,And, cold himself, gave warmth its due."
Author: Alexander Pushkin

2. "Everyone is a fuckin' Napoleon."
Author: Ani DiFranco

3. "He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city, He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans."
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

4. "Napoleon built his campaigns of iron and when one piece broke the whole structure collapsed. I made my campaigns using rope, and if a piece broke I tied a knot"
Author: Arthur Wellesley Wellington

5. "Step one: Invade your opponet's mind. This is just like using mind-speak. Try it on me.""That's easy," I said, casting my mental nets toward Dante, ensnaring his mind, and pushing words into his conscious thought. I'm in your mind, having a look around, and it's awfully empty in here.Wiseacre, Dante returned. Nobody says that anymore. Speaking of which, how old are you in Nephilim years? I'd never thought to ask. I swore fealty during Napoleon's invasion of Italy-my homeland.And that was in what year...? Help me out. I'm not a history buff.Dante smiled. 1796.Wow. You're old."
Author: Becca Fitzpatrick

6. "You may have the worst timing since Napoleon decided the dead of winter was the right moment to invade Russia."
Author: Cassandra Clare

7. "[Wise men] have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere."
Author: Charles Fort

8. "It can certainly be misleading to take the attributes of a movement, or the anxieties and contradictions of a moment, and to personalize or 'objectify' them in the figure of one individual. Yet ordinary discourse would be unfeasible without the use of portmanteau terms—like 'Stalinism,' say—just as the most scrupulous insistence on historical forces will often have to concede to the sheer personality of a Napoleon or a Hitler. I thought then, and I think now, that Osama bin Laden was a near-flawless personification of the mentality of a real force: the force of Islamic jihad. And I also thought, and think now, that this force absolutely deserves to be called evil, and that the recent decapitation of its most notorious demagogue and organizer is to be welcomed without reserve. Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

9. "It is suspected, by some, that spiritual beings are extremely jealous of the natural world because they are nothing more than a figment of the imagination. This might explain their compulsive and obsessive behavior in trying to convince others they are real, and that the natural world is an illusion. The end of the world scenarios they conjure up reveal their Napoleon whit and superiority complex."
Author: Christopher Loren

10. "Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position."
Author: Criss Jami

11. "In 1803, President Jefferson oversaw the purchase of this land from the French for $15 million. It doesn't sound like much for an area three times the size of France itself but given that they'd stolen it from the Native Americans in the first place, I suppose they couldn't grumble. Once some debts had been wiped and estate agents had taken their commission, Napoleon's France ended up pocketing a little more than $8 million. Which is about how much it cost Pepsi Cola to secure the services of Britney Spears. Times have changed."
Author: Dave Gorman

12. "He is Jesus, only. God has revealed Himself to us through Jesus. Jesus is what God wanted us to know and to love. He is not Napoleon the Great. He is not Alexander the Great. He is Jesus only. He is enough. My purpose in life is to worship Jesus and, in so doing, become more Christ-like"
Author: David Paul Kirkpatrick

13. "Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.We are still too near to his greatness,' (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, 'but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.' (748)"
Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin

14. "Tolstoy went on to observe,"This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character."Washington was a typical American. Naopoleon was a typical Frenchmen, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country--- bigger than all the Presidents t,ogether. We are still too near to his greatness, " Tolstoy concluded, "but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when it's light beams directly on us."
Author: Doris Kearns Goodwin

15. "Napoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little money."
Author: Edwidge Danticat

16. "I like France, where everybody thinks he's Napoleon--down here everybody thinks he's Christ."
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

17. "I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

18. "I suffer a little bit from Napoleonism, if you will."
Author: Gary Coleman

19. "There's no present left. This is the problem for a novelist. [The problem] is the present is gone. We're all living in the future constantly . . . Back in the day Leo Tolstoy -- what a sweetheart of a count and of a writer -- in the 1860's he wanted to write about the Napoleonic Campaign, about 1812. If you write about 1812 in 1860, a horse is still a horse. A carriage is still a carriage. Obviously, there are been some technological advancements, et cetera, but you don't have to worry about explaining the next killer [iPhone] app or the next Facebook because right now things are happening so quickly. ("Gary Shteyngart: Finding 'Love' In A Dismal Future", NPR interview, August 2, 2010)"
Author: Gary Shteyngart

20. "Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?"Once again this argument was unanswerable. Certainly the animals did not want Jones back; if the holding of debates on Sunday mornings was liable to bring him back, then the debates must stop. Boxer, who had now had time to think things over, voiced the general feeling by saying: "If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right." And from then on he adopted the maxim, "Napoleon is always right," in addition to his private motto of "I will work harder."
Author: George Orwell

21. "Greatness has its beauties, but only in retrospect and in the imagination": thus wrote General Bonaparte to General Moreau in 1800. His observation helps to explain why the world, only a few years after sighing with relief at its delivery from the ogre, began to worship him as the greatest man of modern times. Napoleon had barely left the scene when the fifteen years that he had carved out of world history to create his glory seemed scarcely believable. Only the scars of the war veterans and the empty places in the widows' beds seemed to attest to the reality of those years, and time soon eliminated even these silent witnesses. What remained, in retrospect and in the imagination, was legend and symbol."
Author: J. Christopher Herold

22. "The English soldier was probably the worst-treated soldier in Europe, and judging from the English casualty rates during the Napoleonic wars, English generals were more lavish with their soldiers' lives than were their French and German colleagues."
Author: J. Christopher Herold

23. "The war against Napoleon was won not by England but by Russia, Austria, and Prussia; but England won the last battle and she won the peace."
Author: J. Christopher Herold

24. "Just as Napoleon was the sole authority in the state, so the husband and father was to exercise authority over his family. Unfortunately the only possible result of despotism on either level is hypocrisy."
Author: J. Christopher Herold

25. "…the loneliness…the "inexpressibly delicious" sensation of this memory - for as memories are older they're like wine rarer, till if you find a real old memory, one of infancy, not an established often tasted one but a brand new one, it would taste better than the Napoleon brandy Stendhal himself must have stared at…"
Author: Jack Kerouac

26. "Napoleon made war like I make love—from a height of about 68 centimeters. (I wear platform shoes while I'm on my knees)"
Author: Jarod Kintz

27. "The truth is very few of us are related to Napoleon or Cleopatra. Although, those are bad examples as I am actually descended from both of them."
Author: Jim Piddock

28. "Normally, if someone's legacy will outlast their life, it's apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon, or Socrates, or Muhammad died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny, failed movement appeared clearly at an end."
Author: John Ortberg

29. "Women rule the world. It's not really worth fighting because they know what they're doing. Ask Napoleon. Ask Adam. Ask Richard Burton or Richie Sambora. Many a man has crumbled."
Author: Jon Bon Jovi

30. "I will not become a Napoleon nor an Alexander, and labour for my own ambition; but I will labour for freedom and for the moral well-being of man."
Author: Lajos Kossuth

31. "But to us of a later generation...it is inconceivable that millions of Christian men should have killed and tortured each other, because Napoleon was ambitious, Alexander firm, English policy crafty, and the Duke of Oldenburg hardly treated. We cannot grasp the connections between these circumstances and the bare fact of murder and violence, nor why the duke's wrongs should induce thousands of men from the other side of Europe to pillage and murder the inhabitants of the Smolensk and Moscow provinces and to be slaughtered by them."
Author: Leo Tolstoy

32. "Napoleon was probably the equal at least of Washington in intellect, his superior in education. Both of them were successful in serving the state."
Author: Matthew Simpson

33. "Active people don't change the world profoundly; ideas do. Napoleon is less important in world history than Jean-Jacques Rousseau."
Author: Michel Houellebecq

34. "..Napoleon once dismissed religion as 'what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.' Meaning, without the fear of God--or literally the hell we might have to pay--the rest of us would just take what we wanted."
Author: Mitch Albom

35. "But if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would, indeed be a civil war of the worst description: we should rather, through the instrumentality of the men of science soften the asperities of national hostility.{Davy's remarks to Thomas Poole on accepting Napoleon's prize for the best experiment on Galvanism.}"
Author: Napoleon

36. "Why don't we want our children to learn to do mathematics? Is it that we don't trust them, that we think it's too hard? We seem to feel that they are capable of making arguments and coming to their own conclusions about Napoleon. Why not about triangles?"
Author: Paul Lockhart

37. "My fame will outshine that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon."
Author: Raymond Roussel

38. "I loved it, it's such fun. I like that people are seeing it and then talking about it. Like when I took my son and his friends to see Napoleon Dynamite last year, we spent the next six weeks trying to explain it."
Author: Robert Downey Jr.

39. "Few are born bold. Even Napoleon had to cultivate the habit on the battlefield, where he knew it was a matter of life and death. In social settings he was awkward and timid, but he overcame this and practice boldness in every part of his life because he saw its tremendous power, how it could literally enlarge a man(even one who, like Napoleon, was in fact conspicuously small)."
Author: Robert Greene

40. "All I did was basically play myself in the role of Napoleon Solo."
Author: Robert Vaughn

41. "The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts,"
Author: Robert W. Chambers

42. "Of all public figures and benefactors of mankind, no one is loved by history more than the literary patron. Napoleon was just a general of forgotten battles compared with the queen who paid for Shakespeare's meals and beer in the tavern. The statesman who in his time freed the slaves, even he has a few enemies in posterity, whereas the literary patron has none. We thank Gaius Maecenas for the nobility of soul we attribute to Virgil; but he isn't blamed for the selfishness and egocentricity that the poet possessed. The patron creates 'literature through altruism,' something not even the greatest genius can do with a pen."
Author: Roman Payne

43. "So, what's the story?""No story. Just a nightmare.""Meaning?""Meaning, heavy compression lines in his cartilage, severe bruising on his kidneys, liver and lower intestines. Fracture marks on his collar bone, tibia, radius, humerus, scapular, femur and every single one of his ribs have been broken. Don't even get me started on the concussive damage to his skull and brain tissue. Twenty-three percent of this boys body is scared for life. And yet, every organ is functioning normally and his neurological activity is above average. He's eighteen years old and he weights about two bills but remove the scar tissue and he'd weigh about a buck-ten. All in all, I say he lived inside a hydraulic car press, went through the Napoleonic wars and was on board the Hindenburg when it went down in flame and yet he's okay...this boy just refuses to die."
Author: S.L.J. Shortt

44. "God himself, sir, doesn't propose to judge man until the end of his days. (So why should you and I? ~ this latter part is added by Napoleon Hill)"
Author: Samuel Johnson

45. "It was the destiny of Napoleon - would it one day be his?"
Author: Stendhal

46. "Howard Hughes was able to afford the luxury of madness, like a man who not only thinks he is Napoleon but hires an army to prove it."
Author: Ted Morgan

47. "Clear your throat and open your eyes. You are on stage. The lights are on. It's only natural if you're sweating, because this isn't make-believe. This is theater for keeps. Yes, it is a massive stage, and there are millions of others on stage with you. Yes, you can try to shake the fright by blending in. But it won't work. You have the Creator God's full attention, as much attention as He ever gave Napoleon. Or Churchill. Or even Moses. Or billions of others who lived and died unknown. Or a grain of sand. Or one spike on one snowflake. You are spoken. You are seen. It is your turn to participate in creation. Like a kindergartener shoved out from behind the curtain during his first play, you might not know which scene you are in or what comes next, but God is far less patronizing than we are. You are His art, and He has no trouble stooping. You can even ask Him for your lines."
Author: Thomas Nelson Publishers

48. "Some friends said they weren't surprised to find out Napoleon and I were related, but it came as quite a shock to me."
Author: Tom Conti

49. "Culture isn't knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes."
Author: Umberto Eco

50. "One day—when the emperor had come to call on his uncle the cardinal—our worthy priest happened to be waiting as his Majesty went by. Noticing that the old man looked at him with a certain curiosity, Napoleon turned around and said brusquely, ‘Who is this good man looking at me?'‘Sire,' replied M. Myriel, "you are looking at a good man, and I at a great one. May we both be the better for it."That evening the emperor asked the cardinal the priest's name, Still later, M. Myriel was totally surprised to learn he had been appointed Bishop of Digne."
Author: Victor Hugo

Napoleon Quotes Pictures