Quotes By Napoleon Bonaparte

You have won battles without cannon, crossed rivers without bridges, made forced marches without shoes, camped without brandy and often without bread. Soldiers of liberty, only republican phalanxes [infantry troops] could have endured what you have endured.

The World is not ruined by the wickedness of the wicked, but by the weakness of the good.

God is on the side with the best artillery.

I base my calculation on the expectation that luck will be against me.

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.

If I were to give liberty to the press, my power could not last three days.

On victory, you deserve beer. On defeat, you need it.

Adversity is the midwife of genius.

After making a mistake or suffering a misfortune, the man of genius always gets back on his feet.

How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.'

If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering an undertaking, I have meditated long and have foreseen what might occur. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unexpected by others; it is thought and preparation.

If you know a country's geography, you can understand and predict its foreign policy.

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.

How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death.

Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost.

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.

The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet.

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.

Die young, and I shall accept your death-but not if you have lived without glory, without being useful to your country, without leaving a trace of your existence: for that is not to have lived at all.