Top 500 Napoleon Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “In revolution there are only two sorts of men, those who cause them and those who profit by them.”

— Napoleon

452. “What I have done up to this is nothing. I am only at the beginning of the course I must run. Do you imagine that I triumph in Italy in order to aggrandise the pack of lawyers who form the Directory, and men like Carnot and Barras? What an idea!”

— Napoleon

453. “Soldiers! Here is the battle you have so long desired! Henceforth victory depends on you; we have need of it.”

— Napoleon

454. “A people that is able to say everything, becomes able to do everything. The crowd which follows me with admiration, would run with the same eagerness were I marching to the Guillotine.”

— Napoleon

455. “Neglect of duty does not cease, by repetition, to be neglect of duty.”

— Napoleon

456. “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.”

— Napoleon

457. “The poor man commands respect; the beggar must always excite anger.”

— Napoleon

458. “Conscription is the vitality of a nation, the purification of its morality, and the real foundations of all its habits.”

— Napoleon

459. “It is the success which makes great men.”

— Napoleon

460. “I haven’t known 6 days of happiness in my life.”

— Napoleon

461. “Ordinary men died, men of iron were taken prisoner: I only brought back with me men of bronze.”

— Napoleon

462. “More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one.”

— Napoleon

463. “A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories.”

— Napoleon

464. “War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts.”

— Napoleon

465. “You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense.”

— Napoleon

466. “Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.”

— Napoleon

467. “Without cavalry, battles are without result.”

— Napoleon

468. “The fate of a Nation may sometimes depend upon the position of a fortress.”

— Napoleon

469. “Soldiers, forty centuries are looking down upon you from these pyramids.”

— Napoleon

470. “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.’ Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”

— Napoleon

471. “Love is the idler’s occupation, the warrior’s relaxation, and the sovereign’s ruination.”

— Napoleon

472. “War is cruel to the people, and terrible to the conquered.”

— Napoleon

473. “There are two kinds of fidelity, that of dogs and that of cats; you, gentleman, have the fidelity of cats who never leave the house.”

— Napoleon

474. “The bayonet has always been the weapon of the brave and the chief tool of victory.”

— Napoleon

475. “In war, as in love, we must come into contact before we triumph.”

— Napoleon

476. “An aristocracy is the true support of a monarchy.”

— Napoleon

477. “Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolution.”

— Napoleon

478. “The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.”

— Napoleon

479. “To extraordinary circumstance we must apply extraordinary remedies.”

— Napoleon

480. “A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything.”

— Napoleon

481. “The heart may be broken, and the soul remain unshaken.”

— Napoleon

482. “Charges of cavalry are equally useful at the beginning, the middle and the end of a battle. They should be made always, if possible, on the flanks of the infantry, especially when the latter is engaged in front.”

— Napoleon

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

— Napoleon

484. “Whatever misanthropists may say, ingrates and the perverse are exceptions in the human species.”

— Napoleon

485. “The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.”

— Napoleon

486. “He who cannot look over a battlefield with a dry eye, causes the death of many men uselessly.”

— Napoleon

487. “I am conquered less by fortune than by the egotism and ingratitude of my companions in arms.”

— Napoleon

488. “I believe love to be hurtful to society, and to the individual happiness of men. I believe, in short, that love does more harm than good.”

— Napoleon

489. “Democracy, if it is reasonable, limits itself to giving everyone an equal opportunity to compete and to obtain.”

— Napoleon

490. “A Constitution should be short and obscure.”

— Napoleon

491. “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.”

— Napoleon

492. “The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”

— Napoleon

493. “When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.”

— Napoleon

494. “It would be a joke if the conduct of the victor had to be justified to the vanquished.”

— Napoleon

495. “The art of land warfare is an art of genius, of inspiration. On the sea nothing is genius or inspiration; everything is positive or empiric.”

— Napoleon

496. “Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.”

— Napoleon

497. “Public instruction should be the first object of government.”

— Napoleon

498. “International incidents must not be allowed to shape foreign policy, foreign policy must shape the incidents.”

— Napoleon

499. “Never lose sight of this maxim, that you should establish your cantonments at the most distant and best protected point from the enemy, especially where a surprise is possible. By this means you will have time to unite all your forces before he can attack you.”

— Napoleon

500. “For the stability of the Government, the people should have a considerable voice in the elections.”

— Napoleon