Best 13 quotes in «napoleon bonaparte quotes» category

He is not a great man. None of us are great men. We are just caught in the wave of history.

I want to go with you," I told him. "To Egypt?" he whispered. "Wherever you go.

Je ne trouve de noblesse que dans la canaille que J'ai négligée, et de canaille que dans la noblesse que J'ai faite. (Napoléon Bonaparte)

Much of the attraction of the cult has to do with the grace of an early and romantic death. George Orwell once observed that if Napoleon Bonaparte had been cut down by a musket ball as he entered Moscow, he would have been remembered as the greatest general since Alexander. And not only did Guevara die before his ideals did, he died in such a manner as to inspire something akin to superstition. He rode among the poor of the altiplano on a donkey. He repeatedly foresaw and predicted the circumstances of his own death. He was spurned and betrayed by those he claimed to set free. He was by calling a healer of the sick. The photographs of his corpse, bearded and half-naked and lacerated, make an irresistible comparison with paintings of the deposition from Calvary. There is a mystery about his last resting place. Alleged relics are in circulation. There have even been sightings….

No king establishes a kingdom without pouring blood of a nation.

Napoleon would always be extremely fastidious when it came to other people's morals, although his own were frequently questionable.

Nous étions nombreux à développer une allergie aux illusions virutuelles. Les sommations de l'époquenous fatiguaient : "Enjoy! Take care ! Be safe !Be connected !" Nous étions dégoûtés du clignotement des villes. Si nous écrasions à coups de talon les écrans livides de nos vies high-tech s'ouvrirairnt un chemin noir, une lueurde tunnel à travers le dispositif. [...] vivre me semblait le synonyme de "s'échapper". Napoléon avait dit au général de Caulain-court dans le traîneau qui les ramenait à Paris après le passage de la Berezina : "Il y a deux sortes d'hommes, ceux qui commandent et ceux qui obéissent." [...] l'Empereur avait oublié une troisième colonne : les hommes qui fuient. "Sire!" lui aurais-je dit si je l'avais connu' "Fuir, c'est commander ! C'est au moins commander au destin de n'avoir aucune prise sur vous.

Napoleon, when hearing about Laplace's latest book, said, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its creator.' Laplace responds, 'Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. (I had no need of that hypothesis.)

This society [Jesuits] has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed the progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally. {Letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 4, 1816. Adams wrote an anonymous 4 volume work on the destructive history of the Jesuits}

When Bonaparte returned from Italy he called on Mr. Paine and invited him to dinner: in the course of his rapturous address to him he declared that a statue of gold ought to be erected to him in every city in the universe, assuring him that he always slept with his book 'Rights of Man' under his pillow and conjured him to honor him with his correspondence and advice.

If Napoleon can seek to ascend all the thrones of Europe, I suppose we may go dragging them out from under him

When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; no, it is the atmosphere in which the talent was cradled that explains; it is the training it received while it grew, the nurture it got from reading, study, example, the encouragement it gathered from self-recognition and recognition from the outside at each stage of its development: when we know all these details, then we know why the man was ready when his opportunity came.

And, Your Majesty, he was afraid to tell you, but … secretly, he was a Pisces.