Napoleon's Maxims & Quotes

On Himself

• I am never angry when contradicted, I seek to be enlightened.
  
  
• All men are equal before God: wisdom, talents, and virtue are the only difference between them.
  
  
• I like not your free thinkers, fools only defy mystery.
  
  
• The man born for office and authority, see nobody, he sees only things, their weight and their consequence.
  
  
• I have never found the limit of my capacity for work.
  
  
• We walk faster when we walk alone.
  
  
• Great ambition is the passion of a great character. He who is endowed with it, may perform either very great actions, or very bad ones; all depends upon the principles which direct him.
  
  
• He who hazards nothing, gains nothing.

• If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.
  
  
• Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.
  
  
• Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
  
  
• If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.
  
  
• I love a brave soldier who has undergone the baptism of fire.
  
  
• They think I am stern, even hardhearted. So much the better-this makes it unnecessary for me to justify my reputation. My firmness is taken for callousness. I shall not complain, since this notion is responsible for the good order that is prevailing, so that there is nothing that needs to be repressed.
  
  
• My motto has always been: A career open to all talents, without distinctions of birth.
  
  

• Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard. When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another. Do I wish to sleep, I simply close all the drawers and then I am - asleep.

• I was born and made for work.

• I have recognised the limits of my eyesight and of my legs, but never the limits of my working power.
  
  
• I have a taste for founding, not for owning.
  
  
• I have come to realise that men are not born to be free.
  
  
• I am not moved by the tears of a duchess, but the sufferings of the people touch me.
  
  
• Friendship is only a word, I care for nobody.
  
  
• I would kiss a man's arse if I needed him.
  
  
• Even when I am gone, I shall remain in people's minds the star of their rights, my name will be the war cry of their efforts, the motto of their hopes.
  
  
• We are born, we live, we die among supernatural.
  
  
• I know when it is necessary, how to leave the skin of lion to take one of fox.
  
  
• When I want any, good head work done; I always choose a man, if possible with a long nose.
  
  
• Circumstances? I make circumstances!
  
  
• Be successful! I judge men only by the results of their actions.
  
  
• I like honest men of all colors.
  
  
• I start out by believing the worst.
  
  
• The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast.
  
  
• I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.
  
  
• If I had not been born Napoleon, I would have liked to have been born Alexander.
  
  
• What I did is immense. What I had decided to do, and what I had projected were still more so.
  
  
• The word 'impossible' is not in my dictionary.
  
  
• I wished to found a European system, a European Code of Laws, a European judiciary; there would be but one people in Europe.
  
  
• I reign only through the fear I inspire.
  
  
• I should have conquered the world.