Saul David Quotes

Along with all those books about Lincoln, Obama might read some biographies of Napoleon. The general who established the Legion d'Honneur understood that people fought as much for medals as for morals.

There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.

[Of Napoleon BonaparteII:] His mind was a kind of extinct sulfur pit.

If you ask me about Napoleon, I'll tell you about his relationship with sugar. And canning - thanks to Napoleon, we have canning.

Europeans are forever the offspring of Machiavelli, trapped in a historical rollercoaster that can bring us a monarchy-toppling French Revolution and then a few years later Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor.

Napoleon the Third was not much. He died in England, and was buried in a country church-yard much the same as Kiltartan. But Napoleon the First was a great man; it was given out of him there never would be so great a man again.

Margaret Thatcher inherited a country in transition. The British Empire was still a considerable entity well into the 20th century.

I was France.

I had always been fascinated with Napoleon because he was a self-made emperor; Victor Hugo said, 'Napoleon's will to power,' and it was the title of my paper. And I submitted it to my teacher, and he didn't think I had written it. And he wanted me to explain it to him.

I used to say of Napoleon that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.

At public ceremonies, moreover, mothers whose sons were conscripted for the business of fighting were lined up and “invited” to kiss the cannon already used or to be used in the execution of Italy’s imperial program in Ethiopia.

Napoleon—mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream.

[Writing about Napoleon Bonaparte:] That infernal creature who is the curse of the human race becomes every day more and more abominable.

Everyone has come to recognize that the Great War [World War I] was utter social insanity, and was a crazy war, and we had no business in it at all.

At no place in this world can I yield a single French right.

You do not understand the honor of France!

[Characterizing Napoleon Bonaparte:] The greatest of destroyers of the human race.

The moment Napoleon takes possession of New Orleans, we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.

The student of French history will recall three systems which have tried to deal with this admitted passion of the French people. The Bourbons crushed it; the Orleanists snubbed it; the Bonapartes deceived it.

There is now all this patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and European expansionism in the same area.... We must make a start. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy.... Even as I speak to you I may be guilty of what some men call treason.... You young men should refuse to take up arms. Young women tear down the patriotic posters. And all of you — young and old — put away your flags.

Nothing more can be done for your interests or well-being and that I myself am an obstacle to the restoration of good relations between my brother [Napoleon Bonaparte Bonaparte] and this land… I shall never forget so good and virtuous a people as yourselves. My last thought and last concern will be for your happiness…

The long years of fighting Napoleon's ambitions for a world empire had hardened the British into an 'us-against-them' mentality.

Napoleon's plan was for his army to arrive in Egypt not as conquerors but liberators. Landing in Aboukir Bay on July 1, 1798, the French captured Alexandria the next day, overcoming the surprised Mamelukes - the despotic local rulers - with a combination of modern artillery and infantry tactics.