Quotes By Napoleon Bonaparte

You have already been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible Army, full of the desire of delivering you from the iron yoke of England. I eagerly embrace this opportunity of testifying to you the desire I have of being informed by you, by the way of Muscat and Mocha, as to your political situation. I would even wish you could send some intelligent person to Suez or Cairo, possessing your confidence, with whom I may confer. May the Almighty increase your power and destroy your enemies.

Well, then, had I been at Martinique, I should also have been on the side of the English, because above all things it is necessary to save one's life. I am for the whites, because I am white; I have no other reason, yet that is reason good enough. How was it possible to grant liberty to the Africans, to men without any kind of civilization, who did not even know what a colony meant, or that there was such a place as France?

They seek to destroy the Revolution by attacking my person: I will defend it for I am the Revolution, I myself! Henceforth they will look to it, for they will know of what we are capable.

The people must not be counted upon; they cry indifferently : "Long live the King!" and "Long live the Conspirators!" a proper direction must be given to them, and proper instruments employed to effect it.

Orders and decorations are necessary in order to dazzle the people.

Audacity succeeds as often as it fails; in life it has an even chance.

Impatience is a great obstacle to success; he who treats everything with brusqueness gathers nothing, or only immature fruit which will never ripen.

One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms.

From triumph to downfall is but a step. I have seen a trifle decide the most important issues in the gravest affairs.

Destiny urges me to a goal of which I am ignorant. Until that goal is attained I am invulnerable, unassailable. When Destiny has accomplished her purpose in me, a fly may suffice to destroy me.

Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success.

What are we? What is the future? What is the past? What magic fluid envelops us and hides from us the things it is most important for us to know? We are born, we live, and we die in the midst of the marvelous.

How many seemingly impossible things have been accomplished by resolute men because they had to do, or die.

I do not believe it is in our nature to love impartially. We deceive ourselves when we think we can love two beings, even our own children, equally. There is always a dominant affection.

In politics nothing is immutable. Events carry within them an invincible power. The unwise destroy themselves in resistance. The skillful accept events, take strong hold of them and direct them.

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.

In politics, an absurdity is not an impediment.

Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity.

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

A commander in chief ought to say to himself several times a day: If the enemy should appear on my front, on my right, on my left, what would I do? And if the question finds him uncertain, he is not well placed, he is not as he should be, and he should remedy it.