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Napoleonic quotes


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Who said the man couldn't turn a phrase?

“Vengeance has no foresight.”

“If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.”

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

“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”

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

“Imagination governs the world.”

"Men are led by toys."

“In order not to be astonished at obtaining victories, one ought not to think only of defeats.”

“In politics nothing is immutable. Events carry within them an invincible power.”

“One can lead a nation only by helping it see a bright outlook. A leader is a dealer in hope.”

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

“One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.”

“Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.”

“Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.”

“The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.”

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

We frustrate many designs against us by pretending not to see them.”

“It requires more courage to suffer than to die.” 

“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of "colored ribbon.

“There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.” 

“Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.”

“An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.”

“I have only one counsel for you — be master.”

“Character is victory organized.” 

“There are only two forces that unite men — fear and interest.”

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

 “Send me 300 francs; that sum will enable me to go to Paris. There, at least, one can cut a figure and surmount obstacles. Everything tells me I shall succeed. Will you prevent me from doing so for the want of 100 crowns?”

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”

“He who fears being conquered is certain of defeat.”

“When I want any good head work done; I always choose a man, if possible with a long nose.”

 

Edited by Childress
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Good one. Also, "One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent." You could fill several pages with Napoleon's pithy remarks.

Poll: Who was the greatest aphorist? Hypothetical nominees- Oscar Wilde,  La Rochefoucauld,  Jonathon Swift.... Stalin came up with a few, deeply cynical, zingers. Hitler? Not so much.

 

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Pretty feeble, indeed. No doubt due to Hitler's diarrhetic mode of conversation. Compared to Stalin:

"A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic"

Gruesome, but punchy. It gets the job done. Or, George S. Patton: "Watch what people are cynical about, and one can discover what they lack".  

 

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Then there's the formidable longshoreman/philosopher Eric Hoffer, the likeliest rival to Napoleon in the sheer volume of pungent aphorisms.

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“We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.” 

“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.” 

"Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.” 

“Anger is the prelude to courage.” 

“Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.” 

“The greatest weariness comes from work not done. 

“It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.” 

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.” 

“What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.” 

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.” 

“We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.”

“It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay. ”

“Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.” 

 

Edited by Childress
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Childress,

Referring to decorations and awards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Honour

Napoleon famously declared, "You call these baubles, well, it is with baubles that men are led... Do you think that you would be able to make men fight by reasoning? Never. That is good only for the scholar in his study. The soldier needs glory, distinctions, rewards."[5] This has been often quoted as "It is with such baubles that men are led."

This is an extensive list of his maxims.

http://www.napoleonguide.com/maxim_war.htm

Regards,

John Kettler

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Ok then, add Frederik to your list. He made a few nice statements. My all time favourite: "In my country, everybody shall live up to his own liking."

Well, he was wise enough to add some restrictions, but the fundamental idea was Great. Considering it came from an 18th Century monarch.

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24 minutes ago, StieliAlpha said:

And from Childress OP, number three is nice. It has so much actual relevance.

 

You mean Hoffer?

Also: 'It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.'

And: " The sick in soul insist that humanity is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax."

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Here's a favorite:

'The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.'
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson adapted this all-too-true homily from Samuel Johnson. What Dr. Johnson said to Boswell was, "If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons." Emerson's version is actually more incisive, if not profound in its implications.

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  • 3 weeks later...

2-The-Emperor-Napoleons-hat.jpg

Christie's London has recently offered one of Napoleon's bicorne hats (above). Price: 500,000 pounds. It's said that Napoleon normally bought 4 dark green, velvet hats a year from Poupart & Cie, Paris. He detested hats off the production line assigning valets the task of breaking them in. The inner dimensions suggest that despite his short stature the Emperor had an unusually large head.

The convention of the time was to wear these hats with their corners pointed forward and back, a la the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon wore his sideways allegedly to render his figure instantly identifiable on the battlefield, that style being forbidden to subalterns. Or was it a precocious example of clever branding similar to Churchill's cigar or Hitler's toothbrush mustache?

Edited by Childress
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  • 1 month later...

The cult of the Leader: Ceausescu in Romania, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, the three generations - Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un in North Korea, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and the list goes on and on. In the crucial matter of marketing and branding, dictators compete,borrowing imagery:

War of the worlds. Stalin and Hitler on propaganda posters

Every leader, demagogue or tyrant must be proficient at selling himself, cut through the noise and package his product. Hitler and the Nazis proved themselves marketing geniuses, beginning with the Swastika, a potent symbol. The Communists under Stalin surpassed their matchless pageantry in size, but not in style.

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