Quotes by J. Christopher Herold

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

His [Pitts] successor as prime minister was Mr. Addington, who was a friend of Mr. Pitt, just as Mr. Pitt was a friend of Mr. Addington; but their respective friends were each others enemies. Mr. Fox, who was Mr. Pitts enemy (although many of his friends were Mr. Pitts friends), had always stood uncompromisingly for peace with France and held dangerously liberal opinions; nevertheless, in 1804, Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt got together to overthrow Mr. Pitts friend Mr. Addington, who was pushing the war effort with insufficient vigor.

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

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.

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.

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