Napoleonic Quotes

• The brief legal emancipation of Jews during the Napoleonic wars released unparalleled economic, professional, and cultural energies. It was though a high dam had suddenly been breached.

  Amos Elon

  War, Energy, Dams

  Amos Elon (2003). “The Pity of it All: A Portrait of German Jews, 1743-1933”

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• I have no Napoleonic dream. I'm just hard-working and pragmatic.

  Roman Abramovich

  Motivational, Dream, Perseverance

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• There has never been a century that has not had a systemic war - a systemic war, meaning when the entire system convulses. From the Seven Years' War in Europe to the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century to the World Wars, every century has one.

  George Friedman

  War, Years, Europe

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• What could make the Napoleonic Wars more exciting? Dragons.

  Naomi Novik

  War, Dragons, Exciting

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to will power-at its worst the Napoleonic delusion.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Success, Destiny, Giving

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2009). “The Crack-Up”, p.89, New Directions Publishing

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• I like the idea of getting to dress up, like to do a Barry Lyndon or something about the Napoleonic period, the grand army retreating from Moscow. I understand that there's a craft to acting and a lot of people work hard at it. I just know that music is my first love. I love music, I love film, and I love clothes.

  Ian Astbury

  Hard Work, Army, First Love

  "Ian Astbury on the Death of the Rock Star". Interview with Mick Stingley, www.esquire.com. December 27, 2013.

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• I think there is a risk that the Holocaust will be placed under a glass bubble just like the Napoleonic Wars or the Thirty Years' War. If you don't make the connection between memories of past atrocities and the present, there isn't any point to it. There are plenty of horrible things happening today in Germany and in the rest of the world.

  Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

  Memories, War, Past

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• At the time Latin America was composed only of colonies. We were up against the biggest army of the colonial world, the Napoleonic army. Haiti was ostracized for almost a century. Surviving in that international context is in itself a feat.

  Michele Montas

  Latin, Army, America

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• Like all men who are Napoleonic in their ambitionshe has instincts about the nature of growth, a lover's sense of the momentof crisis, and he knewhow costly is defeat when it is not soothed by greater consciousness, and how wasteful is the profit of victory when there is not the courage to employ it.

  Norman Mailer

  Courage, Ambition, Men

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• In the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as in so many later conflicts, British women seem to have been no more markedly pacifist than men. Instead, and exactly like so many of their male countrymen, some women found ways of combining support for the national interest with a measure of self-promotion. By assisting the war effort, women demonstrated that their concerns were by no means confined to the domestic sphere. Under cover of a patriotism that was often genuine and profound, they carved out for themselves a real if precarious place in the public sphere.

  Linda Colley

  Real, War, Mean

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• Oh, I’m nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading, and I’m nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I’m working on right now. It’s a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare, and it’s going to be fun.

  Billy Campbell

  Fun, Reading, Games

  "Q&A – Billy Campbell (Darren Richmond)". AMC Interview, www.amc.com. April 2012.

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• Not only is the Napoleonic dream stronger today in our imaginations than it has ever been, but one can already feel the slow falling away of moral opprobrium from our memory of Hitler. In another fifty years we may well find ourselves weighed down by a second monstrous dream of pure grandeur to match that of the Emperor. Two men who dared. Two men who were adored. Two men who led with brilliance. Two men who administered fairly and efficiently. Two men who were modest in their own needs but surrounded by lesser beings who profited from their situation and came between the Hero and the people.

  John Ralston Saul

  Dream, Memories, Fall

  John Ralston Saul (2013). “Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

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• It cost about 75 cents to kill a man in Ceasar's time. The price rose to about $3,000 per man during the Napoleonic wars; to $5,000 in the American Civil War; and then to $21,000 per man in World War I. Estimates for the future wars indicate that it may cost the warring countries not less than $50,000 for each man killed.

  Homer Bone

  Death, Country, War

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• If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur.

  Mark Twain

  War, Home, Fighting

  Mark Twain (1994). “Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches”, p.146, Penguin

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• But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more.

  Patrick O'Brian

  War, Past, Years

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• 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.

  David Cameron

  War, Writing, Europe

  David Cameron's Speech about his plans for a referendum on British membership of the European Union, www.theguardian.com. January 23, 2013.

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