Andrew Roberts

"A. J. P. Taylor, Brad Stone, Andrew Roberts, Roy Jenkins, Winston Churchill (the author), David Cannadine, Robert Tombs, Walter Isaacson, Neal Gabler, Tom Cannon, Bob Dylan (the author), Ian Bell, Thomas Kuhn, Viktor Frankl, Robert Skidelsky, Victor Sebestyen, Nelson Mandela (the author), Peter Hain, Lindy Woodhead, A. N. Wilson, Andrew Welburn, John Campbell, Nancy Andreasen, Timothy Wilson and Max Gunther."

"Napoleon was able to compartmentalize his life to quite a remarkable degree, much more so even than most statesmen and great leaders. He could entirely close off one part of his mind to what was going on in the rest of it; he himself likened it to being able to open and close drawers in a cupboard."

"‘blunt in his manners, bold, enterprising and even ferocious’ – four adjectives that would serve to describe him for the rest of his life.48"

"‘I no longer regarded myself as a simple general,’ Napoleon later said of his victory, ‘but as a man called upon to decide the fate of peoples. It came to me then that I really could become a decisive actor on our national stage. At that point was born the first spark of high ambition.’51 He repeated this to so many different people on so many different occasions throughout his life that Lodi really can be taken as a watershed moment in his career. Vaunting ambition can be a terrible thing, but if allied to great ability – a protean energy, grand purpose, the gift of oratory, near-perfect recall, superb timing, inspiring leadership – it can bring about extraordinary outcomes."

"Napoleon believed that ‘bloodletting is among the ingredients of political medicine’, but he also thought that quick and certain punishments meant that large-scale repression could largely be avoided.76"

"(‘One must speak to the soul,’ he once said of his battlefield speeches, ‘it is the only way to electrify the men.’50)"

"‘Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard,’ he once said. ‘When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another. Do I wish to sleep? I simply close all the drawers, and there I am – asleep.’92"

"Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come."

"‘In war,’ he was to say in 1808, ‘moral factors account for three-quarters of the whole; relative material strength accounts for only one-quarter.’82"

"Napoleon flattered his troops with references to the ancient world – though only a tiny minority would have been conversant with the Classics – and when with a special flourish he compared them to eagles, or told them how much their families and neighbours would honour them, he captivated the minds of his men, often for life."

"‘The men who have changed the world never succeeded by winning over the powerful, but always by stirring the masses. The first method is a resort to intrigue and only brings limited results. The latter is the course of genius and changes the face of the world.’ Napoleon on St Helena"

"Placing oneself in the limelight while seeming modestly to edge away from it is one of the most skilful of all political moves, and Napoleon had mastered it perfectly."

"‘The frontiers of states are either large rivers, or chains of mountains, or deserts. Of all these obstacles to the march of an army, the most difficult to overcome is the desert.’ Napoleon’s Military Maxim No."

"‘The art of appointing men’, Napoleon told Mollien, ‘is not nearly so difficult as the art of allowing those appointed to attain their full worth.’32"

"‘What a pity the man wasn’t lazy.’ Talleyrand on Napoleon"

"war.70 The cynical remark made about d’Enghien’s execution – ‘It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder’ –"

"Napoleon expostulated, ‘Impossible, sir! I am not acquainted with the word; it is not in the French language, erase it from your dictionary.’8"

"In his Phenomenology Hegel posited the existence of the ‘beautiful soul’, a force that acts autonomously in disregard of convention and others’ interests, which, it has been pointed out, was ‘not a bad characterisation’ of Napoleon himself.103"

"‘During the Revolutionary wars the plan was to stretch out, to send columns to the right and left,’ Napoleon said years later, ‘which did no good. To tell you the truth, the thing that made me gain so many battles was that the evening before a fight, instead of giving orders to extend our lines, I tried to converge all our forces on the point I wanted to attack. I massed them there.’41"

"What at first struck me most was the remarkable perspicuity and grand simplicity of his mind and its processes. Conversation with him always had a charm for me, difficult to define. Seizing the essential point of subjects, stripping them of useless accessories, developing his thought and never ceasing to elaborate it till he had made it perfectly clear and conclusive, always finding the fitting word for the thing, or inventing one where the image of language had not created it, his conversation was ever full of interest. Yet he did not fail to listen to the remarks and objections addressed to him. He accepted them, questioned or opposed them, without losing the tone or overstepping the bounds of a business conversation; and I have never felt the least difficulty in saying to him what I believed to be the truth, even when it was not likely to please him.84"