Start hereNapoleon wrote "that is not French" to a general who told him something was impossible. Yet the earliest copy we found of the famous "Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools" is in a London magazine of 1851. So which Napoleon quotes are his?
Napoleon left a huge paper trail. The Fondation Napoléon’s edition of his letters has 2,551 letters for the year 1812 alone. People around him also wrote down what he said. So there is plenty of real Napoleon to quote.
There are also many lines with his name on them that turn up only long after he died in 1821. Below are 23 famous ones. For each, you get a verdict, the earliest source we found, and his real words where there are any.
Each verdict is about whether the words are his. It never rules on whether the line is wise.
The verdicts
Where we looked
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His letters. The nineteenth-century Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, published by order of Napoleon III.
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The scans. Its volumes are on the Internet Archive, and we read the ones cited below.
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People who were with him. The journals and memoirs of Las Cases, O’Meara and De Pradt, and a book of his remarks in the Council of State.
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The earliest printings. For the “earliest we found” dates, we searched the scanned books, magazines and newspapers on the Internet Archive on 20 October 2026, and read Quote Investigator’s research.
One gap matters. We could not search Gallica, the French national library’s digital library, because its search sat behind a bot check, and we did not try to get around it. So “we found no French original” means exactly that, and no more.
Lines in his own letters and memoirs
1. “Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily”
Holds up It is in a letter he wrote to General Lauriston on 12 December 1804, telling him to leave without delay. Letter no. 8209, in volume 10 of the printed correspondence, reads: La mort n’est rien; mais vivre vaincu et sans gloire, c’est mourir tous les jours.
In our translation: “Death is nothing; but to live defeated and without glory is to die every day”.
Just before it, he gives Lauriston three principles: bringing forces together, activity, and a firm resolve to die with glory.
2. “Impossible is not French”
Partly The idea is in a letter. The short saying is not. On 9 July 1813, at Dresden, Napoleon answered a letter from General Lemarois, the governor of Magdeburg. His reply, letter no. 20256, says: « Ce n’est pas possible », m’écrivez-vous : cela n’est pas français.
In our translation: “‘It is not possible,’ you write to me: that is not French.” The subject was oats for the horses of the Guard. The saying Impossible n’est pas français is commonly linked to this letter. The newspaper that says so calls it an old expression popularised under Napoleon.
In 1837 a book about army life under the Empire, by Elzéar Blaze, has a version of the short saying: Le mot impossible n’est pas français. Blaze credits it to a marshal of France whose name, he says, he no longer remembers.
3. “Soldiers, forty centuries look down upon you”
Partly By his own later account he said it, but the wording moved around. His memoirs, dictated on Saint Helena, say that at the moment of the battle he pointed to the pyramids and told his troops: Soldats, quarante siècles vous regardent. That is, “Soldiers, forty centuries are looking at you.”
The editors of his correspondence print it under 21 July 1798, as item 2816. Their only source is that memoir.
A longer form was in print in his lifetime. A book by J. Chas, published in Paris in 1801, has Du haut de ces pyramides quarante siècles nous contemplent: “from the height of these pyramids, forty centuries contemplate us”.
There it is a thought he had on visiting the pyramids, not a speech before the battle.
In 1802 Vivant Denon, an artist who went with the army to Egypt, published his account. In it, Bonaparte gives his last orders before the battle. Then, pointing to the pyramids, he says: Allez, et pensez que du haut de ces monuments quarante siècles nous observent.
That is, “Go, and think that from the top of these monuments forty centuries are watching us”. So the line is old, but the early accounts disagree on when and how he said it.
4. “An army of deer led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a deer”
Partly He used it, but as somebody else’s saying. In memoirs dictated on Saint Helena and published in English in 1823, he writes of “making good the saying of the Athenian general”. Quote Investigator traces it to Plutarch, who credits the Athenian general Chabrias. It also found versions credited to Philip of Macedon and Julius Caesar.
Lines people around him wrote down
The next five come from people who were with him and wrote down what he said. That is good evidence. But it is their record of his talk, not his own writing.
5. “Imagination rules the world”
Holds up, as a recorded saying. Emmanuel de Las Cases kept a journal of his talks with Napoleon on Saint Helena, published in 1823. He records this line in January 1816, when Napoleon was talking about sailors who admired him without ever having seen him.
The French reads: Voilà le fanatisme! Oui, l’imagination gouverne le monde! The 1823 English edition gives “This is fanaticism! Yes, imagination rules the world!” He was not the first to put it that way, though. Quote Investigator found “imagination governs the world” in an American novel of 1815.
6. “From the sublime to the ridiculous there is only one step”
Partly He said it, more than once, but he did not coin it. Dominique de Pradt, his ambassador in Warsaw, published an account of 1812 in 1815. In it, Napoleon, in Warsaw after his defeat in Russia, says: Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.
De Pradt adds that he repeated it two or three times. The saying was already in print, credited to the writer Fontenelle, in a French collection of 1777.
7. “History is a set of lies agreed upon”
Partly Napoleon said something close, and did not claim it as his own. In the journal Las Cases kept on Saint Helena, for November 1816, Napoleon asks “What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon,” adding “as it has been very ingeniously remarked.” The French is une fable convenue: a fable, not a lie.
Quote Investigator traces the idea to Fontenelle’s 1724 essay L’Origine des fables, which was about ancient history. Helvétius credited Fontenelle with the saying in 1758. The word “lies” appears by 1881, in a speech by the American orator Wendell Phillips printed that year.
8. “China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world”
Partly A real conversation sits behind it, but not these words. Barry O’Meara, his surgeon on Saint Helena, published his notes in 1822. In one talk, about Lord Amherst’s mission to China, O’Meara suggested that a few warships could force better terms.
Napoleon disagreed. War with “an immense empire like China” would be “the worst thing you have done for a number of years”. At first Britain would win, he said, “but you would teach them their own strength”. In time China would build a fleet and “defeat you”.
The “sleeping giant” version came later. The earliest copy we found that credits him is in an American newspaper, The Morning Star, on 2 January 1898. It says Napoleon on St Helena “warned Europe to let ‘that sleeping giant slumber.’” The paper gives no source.
The longer “Let him sleep; for when he wakes he will move the world” is in a 1926 book, also without a source.
9. “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich”
Partly It sharpens a real remark. At a Council of State sitting on 4 March 1806, in a debate about burial fees, he spoke about religion. He said he saw in it “not the mystery of the Incarnation, but the mystery of the social order” (our translation).
He went on: religion “links to heaven an idea of equality that keeps the rich from being massacred by the poor”. The source is a book of his Council of State remarks, collected by one of its members, Joseph Pelet de la Lozère, and published in 1833.
Lines credited to him later
For these we found no record from his lifetime. Each one turns up with his name only after 1821, most of them decades later. That does not prove he never said them. It means we found no one who has shown that he did.
10. “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”
Can't confirm The idea has been credited to him for a long time, but no record from Napoleon himself has turned up. The earliest version we found is in 1827, in a life of Napoleon that the Swiss general Antoine-Henri Jomini wrote in Napoleon’s own voice.
In that book, Napoleon says: quand l’ennemi fait un faux mouvement, il faut se garder de l’interrompre (when the enemy makes a false move, take care not to interrupt him). The scene is the Battle of Austerlitz. Jomini himself was not present at Austerlitz, according to the Fondation Napoléon.
Archibald Alison’s 1836 history, citing Jomini, turned it into dialogue: “when the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him”. The wording “making a mistake” is attributed to him in print by 1888.
One fact-check rates the attribution correct on the strength of the 1827 book. We leave it unverified because that book was written by Jomini, in Napoleon’s voice, not by Napoleon.
11. “Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools”
Can't confirm It looks like an English saying with his name attached. The earliest copy we found is in a London magazine, Eliza Cook’s Journal, on 30 August 1851. It is in a short piece called “Earnest Purpose”: “‘Impossible,’ said Napoleon, ‘is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools’”.
A shortened version of the same passage ran in an American magazine, The Ladies’ Repository, in March 1852.
Samuel Smiles made it famous in Self-Help in 1859. We found no French original. The only French version we found is in the 1865 French translation of Smiles’s book: un mot qui ne se trouve que dans le dictionnaire des sots. His real words on the subject are in the 1813 letter above.
12. “Victory belongs to the most persevering”
Can't confirm The earliest copy we found is in an article by John S. C. Abbott on Napoleon’s Syrian expedition, in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in February 1852. Abbott sets it at the siege of Acre: “‘Victory,’ said he, ‘belongs to the most persevering’”. The passage gives no source, and it was printed more than thirty years after he died.
By January 1875 it was a one-line “Gem of thought” signed “Napoleon” in The New Era. The French form, La victoire appartient au plus persévérant, turns up later in what we searched, in a book of 1913.
13. “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever”
Can't confirm We found nothing like it from his time. In 1983 a book of joke “laws” printed it as “Simon’s Law of Destiny: Glory may be fleeting, but obscurity is forever”. The earliest credit to Napoleon we could open is in a 1988 Canadian newspaper.
14. “Ability is nothing without opportunity”
Can't confirm An older wording, “Ability is of little account without opportunity”, was credited to him by 1894, in an American book of local biographies: “So said the great Emperor Napoleon”. The book gives no source. The short form turns up in a 1974 American newspaper with no author, and with his name in a 1989 book of aphorisms.
15. “The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos”
Can't confirm The full line goes on: “The winner will be the one that best controls that chaos, both his and that of his enemy”.
The earliest copy we found is a chapter heading in a US Army field manual dated 27 September 1994. It gives no source beyond his name.
Lines from an 1838 collection
Two popular lines match maxims in a small book, Maximes et pensées de Napoléon, published in Paris in 1838 under the name J.-L. Gaudy jeune. In a letter of 10 October 1838, the novelist Honoré de Balzac told Madame Hanska that the work was his.
For about seven years, he wrote, whenever he found “a striking and new thought” said by Napoleon in a book, he noted it down. He had five hundred. He sold the work to a former hosier, who was to dedicate the book to King Louis-Philippe. The collection gives no sources.
The historian Frédéric Masson doubted that they were Napoleon’s. A later reprint, edited by Hector Fleischmann, quotes him: On n’en trouverait point dix, dit-il, qui, même défigurées, figurent dans les œuvres ou dans la correspondance de Napoléon.
In our translation: “You would not find ten of them, he says, that appear, even distorted, in Napoleon’s works or correspondence”.
He goes on: mais on en trouverait infiniment qui signifieraient au propre quelle idée le romancier avait voulu se faire du héros. In our translation: “but you would find countless ones that show exactly what idea the novelist had wanted to form of the hero”.
16. “A leader is a dealer in hope”
Can't confirm It is maxim 93 in the 1838 collection: On ne conduit le peuple qu’en lui montrant un avenir : un chef est un marchand d’espérance. In our translation: “You lead the people only by showing them a future: a leader is a dealer in hope.” We found no earlier source.
17. “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself”
Can't confirm Maxim 84 in the same collection reads On ne fait bien que ce que l’on fait soi-même: “you only do well what you do yourself”.
The thought was already a stage line. In Charles-Guillaume Étienne’s 1807 comedy Bruis et Palaprat, a character says On n’est jamais servi si bien que par soi-même: “you are never served so well as by yourself”.
In English it was already a saying before 1838. In Frederick Chamier’s 1835 book The Unfortunate Man, the narrator acts “as I had often heard ‘whenever you want a thing well done, do it yourself’”.
Lines that belong to someone else
18. “There is nothing we can do”
Doesn't hold up The line comes from a TikTok photo slideshow posted on 15 August 2023. Two rage-comic figures, drawn as Napoleon and one of his men exiled on St Helena, trade two lines. We found no letter, speech or memoir in which Napoleon says it.
Similar words do turn up, in a different sense. A letter of his from 16 May 1813 has il ne faut rien faire à présent (“nothing must be done for now”). It is about a fortified post at the mouth of the Havel. Our page on the “There is nothing we can do” meme has the full story.
19. “An army marches on its stomach”
Doesn't hold up, as his words. Quote Investigator found the saying credited to Frederick the Great first. In 1858 Thomas Carlyle wrote that “an Army, like a serpent, goes upon its belly”. That credit came long after Frederick’s death too, and Quote Investigator says that in each case the long delay makes the link less credible.
Napoleon got the credit in print by 1862, in a newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts.
He did talk about food, though. Las Cases records him saying “It is hunger that makes the world move”. About soldiers, he said: “There is no subordination with empty stomachs.”
20. “It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder”
Doesn't hold up It was said about the death of the Duke of Enghien, and it was not his line. Quote Investigator’s earliest match, from 1807, credits Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe, a Councillor of State. Joseph Fouché is its second most likely author.
Even Las Cases, on Saint Helena, gave the line to Fouché. The English edition of 1823 reads: “The remark which he made, or which is attributed to him in the affair of the Duke d’Enghien, is well known”. Napoleon received credit only in 1844.
21. “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”
Doesn't hold up Quote Investigator “has found no substantive support” for crediting Napoleon. The earliest close match it found was printed in 1980 as “Hanlon’s razor”, named after Robert J. Hanlon, a computer programmer. Older Than You Think, Part 2 covers the older ideas behind it.
22. “Not tonight, Josephine”
Doesn't hold up We found nothing from Napoleon’s or Joséphine’s lifetime. By 1908 it was a known catchphrase: a review in the US magazine Variety compares a scene to “the remark ‘Not to-night, Josephine.’”
23. “Able was I ere I saw Elba”
Doesn't hold up It is an English palindrome, and English was not his first language. Quote Investigator’s earliest copy, from 1848, credits someone in Baltimore with the initials J.T.R. Napoleon’s name was attached within a decade.
How to check a Napoleon quote yourself
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Ask for a document and a date. A real Napoleon quotation points to a letter with a number in his printed correspondence, a dated entry in a memoir, or a named witness.
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Look for the French. His collected correspondence is in French. An English line with no French behind it is a reason to look harder.
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Search his letters. The nineteenth-century volumes are on the Internet Archive, and each scan can be searched. The Fondation Napoléon publishes a newer edition, the General Correspondence.
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Read Las Cases with care. His Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, published in 1823, holds many real sayings. It is still his record of Napoleon’s talk, written down by someone else.
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Note the gap. If the earliest copy you can find is decades after 1821, treat the line as unconfirmed, however good it sounds.
Our page on how to spot a fake quote has a routine that works for anyone. For more checked lines, see Did They Really Say That? and Napoleon’s life in checked facts.
Quick answers
What did Napoleon really say about the impossible?
In a letter of 9 July 1813 to General Lemarois he wrote: "'It is not possible,' you write to me: that is not French" (our translation). The saying Impossible n'est pas français is commonly linked to this letter.
Did Napoleon say "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake"?
No record from Napoleon himself has turned up. The earliest version we found is in an 1827 life of Napoleon that Jomini wrote in Napoleon's voice, and one fact-check rates the attribution correct on the strength of that book.
Did Napoleon say "An army marches on its stomach"?
The saying was credited to Frederick the Great first, by 1858, and to Napoleon by 1862. Las Cases does record him saying "There is no subordination with empty stomachs."
Did Napoleon say "There is nothing we can do"?
No. The line comes from a TikTok photo slideshow posted on 15 August 2023, and we found no letter, speech or memoir in which Napoleon says it.
Is "history is a set of lies agreed upon" a Napoleon quote?
Partly. Las Cases records him calling the truth of history "a fable agreed upon" in November 1816, but the idea goes back to Fontenelle in 1724, and the word "lies" appears by 1881.
Use this
Before you share a Napoleon quote, look for the letter, the dated memoir entry or the witness behind it.
- Search his letters for the French words on the Internet Archive.
- Check whether Las Cases, O'Meara or another companion recorded it, and when.
- Find the earliest printing you can, and note how long after 1821 it is.
Is there a letter, a dated memoir entry or a named witness, or only a name under a nice line?
Quick quiz
Nothing is scored or saved. Recalling it once now is what makes it last.
1. Which of these lines is in a letter Napoleon wrote?
Answer: "Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily".Read it again ↑
2. Who first got the credit for "an army marches on its stomach"?
Answer: Frederick the Great.Read it again ↑
3. Where does "A leader is a dealer in hope" come from?
Answer: An unsourced 1838 collection of maxims.Read it again ↑
How we checked this · Last checked October 2026
- His letters were read in the nineteenth-century Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, in the Internet Archive scans of volumes 4, 10, 25 and 29. Translations of his French are ours.
- Records by people around him were read in O'Meara (1822), De Pradt (1815) and the 1833 Council of State book. Las Cases is quoted from Quote Investigator, which prints his French and the 1823 English edition.
- Every "earliest we found" date comes from the Internet Archive's full-text search, run on 20 October 2026, or from Quote Investigator's research. It covers only what has been scanned. Two later books came from its lending library and were read only as search snippets.
- We could not search Gallica, the French national library's digital library, because its search returned a bot check. We did not try to get around it.
- The "never interrupt" entry uses the same wording and verdict as our Real or Myth page, and the meme entry the same facts as our meme page.
Sources
- Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, published by order of Napoleon III (Paris: Plon): vol. 4 (1860), no. 2816; vol. 10 (1862), no. 8209; vol. 25, nos. 20014 and 20256 (Internet Archive scans).Primary
- Fondation Napoléon, “Preface to volume 12 of the General Correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte”.Scholarly
- Barry E. O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile; or, A Voice from St. Helena, 2nd edition (London, 1822), vol. 1, pp. 471–472.Primary
- [Pelet de la Lozère], Opinions de Napoléon sur divers sujets de politique et d’administration (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1833), sitting of 4 March 1806.Primary
- Dominique de Pradt, Histoire de l’Ambassade dans le Grand Duché de Varsovie en 1812 (1815), pp. 215–220.Primary
- Emmanuel de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (1823), as quoted by Quote Investigator (below).Primary
- J. Chas, Tableau historique et politique des opérations militaires et civiles de Bonaparte (Paris, 1801), p. 44 (bound with Berthier’s Relation des campagnes du général Bonaparte en Égypte et en Syrie).Primary
- Vivant Denon, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte (Paris: P. Didot l’aîné, an X [1802]), vol. 1.Primary
- Antoine-Henri Jomini, Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon, racontée par lui-même (Paris: Anselin, 1827), vol. 2.Primary
- Archibald Alison, History of Europe, vol. 5 (Edinburgh, 1836), p. 476.Primary
- Eliza Cook’s Journal, vol. 5 (London, April–October 1851), issue of 30 August 1851, “Earnest Purpose”.Primary
- The Ladies’ Repository, March 1852; Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 157; Self-help; ou, Caractère, conduite et persévérance (1865).Primary
- John S. C. Abbott, “Napoleon Bonaparte: The Syrian Expedition”, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 4, no. 21 (February 1852).Popular
- The New Era, January 1875; Manmath Chandra Mallik, Orient and Occident (London, 1913).Primary
- The Morning Star, 2 January 1898.Popular
- Parker Thomas Moon, Imperialism and World Politics (1926), chapter XIV.Scholarly
- Arthur Bloch, More Murphy’s Law (London: Methuen, 1983); Minden Times, 19 September 1988.Popular
- Biographical Review: Leading Citizens of Cayuga County, New York (Boston: Biographical Review Publishing Company, 1894).Popular
- Sedalia Democrat, 14 April 1974; Webster’s New World Best Book of Aphorisms (1989).Popular
- US Army, FM 34-1: Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Operations (27 September 1994), p. 7-2.Primary
- Variety, 29 August 1908.Popular
- Charles-Guillaume Étienne, Bruis et Palaprat (Paris, 1807), scene II.Primary
- Frederick Chamier, The Unfortunate Man, vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1835).Primary
- Hector Fleischmann (ed.), Napoléon, par Balzac (Paris: Librairie universelle, catalogued as 1910): the Maximes et pensées de Napoléon in full, Balzac’s letter of 10 October 1838, and Frédéric Masson’s judgement from Petites Histoires (1910).Primary
- Quote Investigator: “An Army Marches On Its Stomach”; “What Is History But a Fable Agreed Upon?”; “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous There Is But One Step”; “Imagination Rules the World”; “An Army of Stags Led by a Lion Is More Formidable Than an Army of Lions Led by a Stag”; “It Was Worse Than a Crime; It Was a Blunder”; “Never Attribute to Malice That Which Is Adequately Explained by Stupidity”; “Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba”; “Never Interfere With an Enemy While He’s in the Process of Destroying Himself”.Popular
- Snopes, “Did Napoleon say, ‘Never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake’?” (31 March 2026), which rates the attribution correct.Popular
- Fondation Napoléon, “JOMINI, Antoine Henri, Baron de”.Scholarly
- Fondation Napoléon, “DENON, Dominique-Vivant, baron”.Scholarly
- Le Journal du Dimanche, “D’où vient l’expression « Impossible n’est pas français »?” (4 December 2021).Popular
- Elzéar Blaze, La vie militaire sous l’Empire, vol. 2 (Paris, 1837).Primary
- Know Your Meme, “Napoleon, There Is Nothing We Can Do”.Popular
- Internet Archive full-text search of scanned books, magazines and newspapers, run 20 October 2026.Scholarly