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Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
(15 Aug 1769 - 5 May 1821)
French emperor.
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Science Quotes by Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte (10 quotes)
To Laplace, on receiving a copy of the Mécanique Céleste:
The first six months, which I can spare will be employed in reading it.
The first six months, which I can spare will be employed in reading it.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
Correspondance de Napoléon ler, 27 vendémiaire an VIII [19 October 1799] no. 4384 (1861), Vol. 6, I. Trans. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827: A Life in Exact Science (1997), 176.
A mathematician of the first rank, Laplace quickly revealed himself as only a mediocre administrator; from his first work we saw that we had been deceived. Laplace saw no question from its true point of view; he sought subtleties everywhere; had only doubtful ideas, and finally carried the spirit of the infinitely small into administration.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
As quoted in E.T. Bell, Men of Mathematics (1937, 1965), 182. Without citation, except, “As it is often quoted as … Napoleon’s famous estimate of Laplace, of which he is reported to have delivered himself while he was a prisoner at St. Helena.” Laplace had a six-week tenure in the Ministry of the Interior.
Courage is like love; it must have hope to nourish it.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
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Doctor, no medicine.—We are machines made to live—organized expressly for that purpose.—Such is our nature.—Do not counteract the living principle.—Leave it at liberty to defend itself, and it will do better than your drugs.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
As given in Tryon Edwards (ed.), A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), 339.
Engineers are more clever than artillerymen.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
Speaking to General Baron Gaspard Gourgaud at St. Helena (7 Nov 1817). The meaning is that the work of engineers can provide more effective ways to win a battle than firepower alone. The quote with details cited appears as early as 1 Aug 1943, in Ed Edstrom, 'Off the Cuff', Courier-Journal, magazine, 23. Whereas the quote might be recorded in the journal kept by Gourgaud, Webmaster has not yet located any such primary source for verification.
Statistics is the budget of things; and without a budget there is no public safety.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
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The advancement and perfection of mathematics are intimately connected with the prosperity of the State.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
Correspondance de Napoléon, t. 24 (1868), 112. In Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 42.
The nature of armies is determined by the nature of the civilization in which they exist.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
From Captain Sir Basil Liddell Hart, The Ghost of Napoleon (1933). Cited in Peter G. Tsouras (ed.), The Book of Military Quotation (1992, 2005), 36.
They may say what they like; everything is organized matter. The tree is the first link of the chain; man is the last. Men are young; the earth is old. Vegetable and animal chemistry are still in their infancy. Electricity, galvanism,—what discoveries in a few years!
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
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What sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense.
— Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte
In Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans and Andrew Frothingham, And I Quote (1992), 172, but without definitive source. Webmaster has not found any 19th-century book with such a quotation. Contact webmaster if you can help identify if this is a valid quote or merely a joke.
Quotes by others about Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte (10)
If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.
Lo! (1931, 1941), 8.
[The ancient monuments] were all dwarfs in size and pigmies in spirit beside this mighty Statue of Liberty, and its inspiring thought. Higher than the monument in Trafalgar Square which commemorates the victories of Nelson on the sea; higher than the Column Vendome, which perpetuates the triumphs of Napoleon on the land; higher than the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, which exhibit the latest and greatest results of science, invention, and industrial progress, this structure rises toward the heavens to illustrate an idea ... which inspired the charter in the cabin of the Mayflower and the Declaration of Independence from the Continental Congress.
Speech at unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, New York. In E.S. Werner (ed.), Werner's Readings and Recitations (1908), 107.
This quality of genius is, sometimes, difficult to be distinguished from talent, because high genius includes talent. It is talent, and something more. The usual distinction between genius and talent is, that one represents creative thought, the other practical skill: one invents, the other applies. But the truth is, that high genius applies its own inventions better than talent alone can do. A man who has mastered the higher mathematics, does not, on that account, lose his knowledge of arithmetic. Hannibal, Napoleon, Shakespeare, Newton, Scott, Burke, Arkwright, were
they not men of talent as well as men of genius?
In 'Genius', Wellman’s Miscellany (Dec 1871), 4, No. 6, 203.
If you ask me whether science has solved, or is likely to solve, the problem of this universe, I must shake my head in doubt. We have been talking of matter and force; but whence came matter, and whence came force? You remember the first Napoleon’s question, when the savans who accompanied him to Egypt discussed in his presence the problem of the universe, and solved it to their apparent satisfaction. He looked aloft to the starry heavens, and said—“It is all very well, gentlemen, but who made all these!” That question still remains unanswered, and science makes no attempt to answer it.
Lecture 'On Matter and Force', to nearly 3,000 working men, at the Dundee Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Sep 1867), reported in 'Dundee Meeting, 1867', Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science (Nov 1867)
Napoleon and other great men were makers of empires, but these eight men whom I am about to mention were makers of universes and their hands were not stained with the blood of their fellow men. I go back 2,500 years and how many can I count in that period? I can count them on the fingers of my two hands. Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Kepler, Copernicus, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Einstein—and I still have two fingers left vacant.
Speech (28 Oct 1930) at the Savoy Hotel, London in Einstein’s honor sponsored by a committee to help needy Jews in Eastern Europe. In Albert Einstein, Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931), 31.
Descartes … commanded the future from his study more than Napoleon from his throne.
Paraphrased from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Montesquieu: A Critical and Biographical Introduction to “The Spirit of the Laws” (1900), xiv. The context referred to “Montesquieu … a lonely scholar sitting in a library. Like Descartes or Kant, he commanded the future from his study more than Napoléon from his throne.”
Kant … commanded the future from his study more than Napoleon from his throne.
Paraphrased from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Montesquieu: A Critical and Biographical Introduction to “The Spirit of the Laws” (1900), xiv. The context referred to “Montesquieu … a lonely scholar sitting in a library. Like Descartes or Kant, he commanded the future from his study more than Napoléon from his throne.”
When he had a few moments for diversion, he [Napoleon] not unfrequently employed them over a book of logarithms, in which he always found recreation.
In Napoleon Bonaparte (1904), Vol. 1, chap. 10.
The love of mathematics is daily on the increase, not only with us but in the army. The result of this was unmistakably apparent in our last campaigns. Bonaparte himself has a mathematical head, and though all who study this science may not become geometricians like Laplace or Lagrange, or heroes like Bonaparte, there is yet left an influence upon the mind which enables them to accomplish more than they could possibly have achieved without this training.
In Letter (26 Jan 1798) to Von Zach. As quoted in translation in Karl Bruhns (ed.), Jane Lassell (trans.) and Caroline Lassell (trans.), Life of Alexander von Humboldt (1872), Vol. 1, 232. [Webmaster assigns this quote to Jérôme Lalande as an informed guess for the following reasons. The cited text gives only the last names, Lalande and von Zach, but it does also give a source footnote to a Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden, 1, 340. The journal editor, Franz Xaver von Zach, was a Hungarian astronomer. Jérôme Lalande was a French astronomer, living at the same time, who called himself Jérôme Le Français de la Lande. Their names are seen referred to together in the same journal, Vol. 6, 360.]
[Napoleon] directed Bourrienne to leave all his letters unopened for three weeks, and then observed with satisfaction how large a part of the correspondence had thus disposed of itself, and no longer required an answer.
Lecture, 'Napoleon', collected in Representative Men (1850), 177.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
