“Historians are lenient to those who succeed and stern to those who fail; in this, and this alone, they display strong political sense.”

“Those who mistake their good luck for their merit are inevitably bound for disaster.”

“Just as Napoleon was the sole authority in the state, so the husband and father was to exercise authority over his family. Unfortunately the only possible result of despotism on either level is hypocrisy.”

“The right-wing Tories and the conservative Whigs fought Napoleon as the Usurper and the Enemy of the Established Order; the liberal Tories and the radical Whigs fought him as the Betrayer of the Revolution and the Enslaver of Europe; they were all agreed in fighting him, and his notion that their disagreement signified national disunion was mere wishful thinking. All dictators since his time have fallen into the same trap: themselves blind to the values of liberty, they cannot conceive that people who disagree on its meaning can nevertheless unite in upholding their freedoms against patent despotism.”

“The popular image [in England] of Bonaparte as a blood-stained tyrant and bandit was admittedly exaggerated, but instinct told even the most radical among the English that if liberty, equality, and justice were ever to come to their shores, it certainly was not Napoleon who would bring them there.”

“Napoleon loved only himself, but, unlike Hitler, he hated nobody.”

“Historians are lenient to those who succeed and stern to those who fail; in this, and this alone, they display strong political sense.”