How Napoleon Planned Wars

Napoleon on his destiny: "A superior power pushes me towards a goal of which I know nothing; as long as it has not been attained I am invulnerable, unshakeable; as soon as I am no longer necessary for it, a single step will suffice to topple me."

On Superstitions: "Superstitions are the legacy left by one century's clever people to the fools of the future." Superstitions are mental shortcuts which are helpful when a detailed explanation would be too time-consuming. But superstitions ossify and become counter-productive.

Napoleon on how he planned wars: "There is no man more pusillanimous than I when I am planning a campaign." In the planning stage, Napoleon exaggerated, in his mind "all the dangers and calamities" possible. But while fighting, he forgot everything "except what lead to success."

Napoleon's relationship with power: "I too love power—but I love it as an artist. I love it as a musician loves his violin. I love it for the sake of drawing sounds, chords, and harmonies from it." Napoleon sought power not for the sake of control, but to create something new.

How to police: "The art of the police consists in punishing rarely and severely." Power should mostly be invisible from people's everyday lives: "Authority should make itself felt as little as possible and should not weigh on the people needlessly."

Those who abuse power ultimately taste their own medicine: "A sultan who cut off heads from caprice, would quickly lose his own in the same way. Excesses tend to check themselves by reason of their own violence. What the ocean gains in one place it loses in another."

On love: "The ivy clings to the first tree it meets. This, in a few words, is the story of love." The surprise and satisfaction of first love is hard to shake off. To love another person is to fall into their gravity - a lot depends on who we happen to meet first.

On Louis XVI, who was executed by guillotine in the French Revolution: "When Louis XVI was put on trial, he should have simply said that according to law his person was sacred, and left it at that. This would not have saved his life, but he would've died a king."

On the strange power of public opinion: "Public opinion is an invisible power, mysterious and irresistible. Nothing is more mobile, nothing vaguer, nothing stronger. No matter how capricious, it nonetheless is truthful, reasonable, and just, far more often than one would think."

A leader cannot fight the dominant ideas of his time: "Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you."