Famous Quotes

Quotes by Napoleon Bonaparte

• A leader is a dealer in hope.
• A picture is worth a thousand words.
• A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
• All religions have been made by men.
• Courage is like love it must have hope for nourishment.
• Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
• Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.
• Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
• Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.
• He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.
• History is a set of lies agreed upon.
• History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
• I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.
• I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.
• If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.
• If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.
• If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.
• Imagination rules the world.
• In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
• In politics... never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.
• It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.
• It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
• Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.
• Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.
• Men take only their needs into consideration - never their abilities.
• Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.
• One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.
• One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.
• Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.
• Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
• Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
• Respect the burden.
• Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.
• Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
• The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.
• The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.
• The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue courage is only the second virtue.
• The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one's designs to one's means.
• The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.
• The human race is governed by its imagination.
• The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.