Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

You cannot drag a man's conscience before any tribunal, and no one is answerable for his religious opinions to any power on earth.

When you have an enemy in your power, deprive him of the means of ever injuring you.

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

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

We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost.

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

Unite for the public safety, if you would remain an independent nation.

True character stands the test of emergencies. Do not be mistaken, it is weakness from which the awakening is rude.

Unhappy the general who comes on the field of battle with a system.

To listen to the interests of all marks an ordinary government; to foresee them marks a great government.

There is a joy in danger.

The man fitted for affairs and authority never considers individuals, but things and their consequences.

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. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.

Sometimes a great example is necessary to all the public functionaries of the state.

Success is the most convincing talker in the world.

Society cannot exist without inequality of fortunes and the inequality of fortunes could not subsist without religion. Whenever a half-starved person is near another who is glutted, it is impossible to reconcile the difference if there is not an authority who tells him to.

Simpletons talk of the past, wise men of the present, and fools of the future.

Power is founded upon opinion.

Ordinarily men exercise their memory much more than their judgment.

Orders and decorations are necessary in order to dazzle the people.

Never depend on the multitude, full of instability and whims; always take precautions against it.

My true glory is not to have won 40 battles,... Waterloo will erase the memory of so many victories.... But ... what will live forever, is my Civil Code.

Men, in general, are but great children.

Many a one commits a reprehensible action, who is at bottom an honourable man, because man seldom acts upon natural impulse, but from some secret passion of the moment which lies hidden and concealed within the narrowest folds of his heart.

Malice delights to blacken the characters of prominent men.