Top 500 Napoleon Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “An army marches on its stomach.”

— Napoleon

52. “Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.”

— Napoleon

53. “The leader’s role is to define reality, then give hope.”

— Napoleon

54. “One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.”

— Napoleon

55. “Impossible is the word found only in a fool’s dictionary. Wise people create opportunities for themselves and make everything possible...”

— Napoleon

56. “I saw the crown of France laying on the ground, so I picked it up with my sword.”

— Napoleon

57. “A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights. Men are moved by only two mechanisms: fear and self-interest. Victory belongs to the most persevering.”

— Napoleon

58. “Courage cannot be counterfeited. It is one virtue that escapes hypocrisy.”

— Napoleon

59. “A great people may be killed, but they cannot be intimidated.”

— Napoleon

60. “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”

— Napoleon

61. “It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.”

— Napoleon

62. “Remember, gentlemen, what a Roman emperor said: The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet.”

— Napoleon

63. “It’s the unconquerable soul of man, and not the nature of the weapon he uses, that ensures victory.”

— Napoleon

64. “I know he’s a good general, but is he lucky?”

— Napoleon

65. “Envy is a declaration of inferiority.”

— Napoleon

66. “Give me enough medals and I’ll win you any war.”

— Napoleon

67. “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.”

— Napoleon

68. “As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life.”

— Napoleon

69. “If the Earth were a single state, Istanbul would be its capital.”

— Napoleon

70. “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.”

— Napoleon

71. “The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second. Poverty, privation, and want are the school of the good soldier.”

— Napoleon

72. “A starving army is actually worse than none.”

— Napoleon

73. “The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance.”

— Napoleon

74. “The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances.”

— Napoleon

75. “In war, men are nothing, one man is everything.”

— Napoleon

76. “Champagne! In victory, one deserves it; in defeat one needs it.”

— Napoleon

77. “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.”

— Napoleon

78. “It is an approved maxim in war, never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for this reason alone, that he desires it.”

— Napoleon

79. “You must not fear death, my lads; defy him, and you drive him into the enemy’s ranks.”

— Napoleon

80. “Put your iron hand in a velvet glove.”

— Napoleon

81. “The Jews are the master robbers of the modern age.”

— Napoleon

82. “I have come to realise that men are not born to be free.”

— Napoleon

83. “Between a battle lost and a battle won, the distance is immense and there stand empires.”

— Napoleon

84. “You cannot stop me; I spend thirty thousand men a month.”

— Napoleon

85. “Diplomacy is the police in grand costume.”

— Napoleon

86. “There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.”

— Napoleon

87. “The best generals are those who have served in the artillery.”

— Napoleon

88. “The only victory over love is flight.”

— Napoleon

89. “The secret of war lies in the communications.”

— Napoleon

90. “Men will risk their lives, even die for ribbons.”

— Napoleon

91. “A great reputation is a great noise, the more there is of it, and the further does it swell. Land, monuments, Nations, all fall, but the noise remains, and will reach to other generations.”

— Napoleon

92. “War is ninety percent information.”

— Napoleon

93. “After me, the Revolution – or, rather the ideas which formed it – will resume their course. It will be like a book from which the marker is removed, and one starts to read again at the page where one left off.”

— Napoleon

94. “Where the Government is weak, military sway prevails.”

— Napoleon

95. “Prussia was hatched from a cannon-ball.”

— Napoleon

96. “I have so often been mistaken that I no longer blush for it.”

— Napoleon

97. “The worse the man the better the soldier. If soldiers be not corrupt they ought to be made so.”

— Napoleon

98. “The only way to lead people is to show them a future: a leader is a dealer in hope.”

— Napoleon

99. “I have never loved anyone for love’s sake except, perhaps, Josephine – a little.”

— Napoleon

100. “In war, the general alone can judge of certain arrangements. It depends on him alone to conquer difficulties by his own superior talents and resolution.”

— Napoleon