Quotes from Napoleon Bonaparte

War is the business of barbarians.

Generals who save troops for the next day are always beaten.

In war, as in politics, no evil - even if it is permissible under the rules - is excusable unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything beyond that is a crime.

War must be made as intense and awful as possible in order to make it short, and thus to diminish its horrors.

A starving army is actually worse than none.

To extraordinary circumstance we must apply extraordinary remedies.

A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.

Peoples of Egypt , you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights!

A general-in-chief should ask himself several times in the day, What if the enemy were to appear now in my front, or on my right, or my left?

I engage and after that I see what to do.

We should always go before our enemies with confidence, otherwise our apparent uneasiness inspires them with greater boldness.

It is with artillery that war is made.

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

England would be better off without Canada; it keeps her in a prepared state for war at a great expense and constant irritation.

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.

All generals, officers, and soldiers who capitulate in battle to save their own lives should be decimated.

In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments.

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

In war one must lean on an obstacle in order to overcome it.

A man like me troubles himself little about a million men.

War justifies everything.

I have fought sixty battles, and I have learnt nothing which I did not know at the beginning.

The transition from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations in war.

To have good soldiers, a nation must always be at war.