Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes
Has a man the right to kill himself? Yes, if his death harms no one and if life is an evil to him. When is life an evil? When it offers a man nothing but suffering and pain.
Bonaparte, Napoleon. "On Suicide." Napoleon: A Symbol for an Age, edited by Rafe Blaufarb, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008, p. 35.
The Congressman had been found to have committed a number of serious ethical violations and then was accused by a Texas District Attorney of his own party of money laundering and violating Texas campaign finance laws. His ethical and legal problems were heavily covered in the news when the Schiavo case developed of the woman whose brain had been starved for oxygen, for years in a persistent vegetative state, who had not wished to live hooked up to tubes. Some conservatives challenged the right of the husband and the hospital to follow the woman’s wishes even after the courts had consistently ruled that this had been the woman’s wish. Delay used this tragic case to divert attention from his own lapses. It did not work. Some months thereafter, he was forced to resign.
The “logic” of the Japanese was that by eliminating “troublemakers” (those objecting to the Japanese invasion) the lives of other Chinese were saved. This extended to rape and murder of women, beheading of boys and men—civilians and military—and destruction of infants.
Napoléon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader of Corsican descent. He rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, and again in 1815. Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars. He won most of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, building a large empire that ruled over continental Europe before its final collapse in 1815. One of the greatest commanders in history, his wars and campaigns are studied at military schools worldwide. He remains one of the most celebrated and controversial political figures in human history.
