this book is a selection of written and spoken quotes on a variety of subjects grouped according to Broad themes and designed to give the reader an insight into the mind of a man who combined energy of thought and energy of action to an exceptional degree Napoleon was a manipulator of things and men for Napoleon each thought is a step to an action in Napoleon was a radiant power of the mind that cut through speculation
stripping all problems down to their simplest elements discarding all obstacles to action to his mind inaction was unbearable work he said is my element I am born and built for work I have known the limitations of my legs I have known the limitations of my eyes I have never been able to know the limitations of my working capacity long before he played any political role he had discarded whatever Illusions might have prevented him from playing it
he knows that men have always been the same that nothing can change their nature it is from the past that He will draw his lessons in order to shape the present to Napoleon men were weak ineffectually selfish and easily guided the strong are good only the weak are wicked he once wrote this Maxim was to become a cardinal principle of his Politics As for the purpose of life his answer was definite we are born for the
enjoyment of Life happiness is merely the enjoyment of life in the manner that forms best to our nature all my life I have sacrificed everything Comfort self-interest happiness to my destiny destiny must be fulfilled that is my chief Doctrine and Napoleon's idea that you must do everything to fulfill your destiny might be the main uh idea behind the book that I hold in my hand and the one I'm going to talk to you about today
which is the mind of Napoleon a selection from his written and spoken words edited and translated by Jay Christopher Herold this book is very old it's actually first published in 1955 and the book is exactly what the subtitle says it is it's about 300 pages of Napoleon speaking directly to you and after you're done listening to this if you haven't listened to the first episode I did on Napoleon that's more of like an overview of his life uh it's
based on uh this book called Napoleon a concise biography that's episode 294 uh I'd recommend buying that book too uh because it's like a biography of Napoleon I think it's like 130 pages or 140 pages so you can read in like a weekend gives you a a real like nice overview of who he is this is going to be like the this is the second book on Napoleon I've read I plan on reading many many more over my life the reason
um I wanted to do this is because I want to also understand the people that be study on a deeper level and for some reason uh preor War II a lot of history greatest Founders keep repeating that they learned from and studied and read biographies of Napoleon after World War II they still talk about Napoleon but then you have a lot of mentions of Winston Churchill in there as well so there's something about the lives of
Churchill and Napoleon that uh these Founders seem to be drawn from and find uh benefit of studying I want to jump right back into the introduction and again this is just he's just be talking directly to you and I you know it's funny a friend of mine text me and asked me what I was doing and I happen to be reading this book at this time let me this will give you an overview of what what we're about to do here um so he's
like you know what are you doing and I said currently being lectured by Napoleon that I'm soft and fragile and have failed to make the world remember my name for eternity so uh the scale in which this guy thought and lived and acted is just unreal and so let's go back to what he considered his chief Doctrine I want to read that quote again all my life I have sacrificed everything Comfort self-interest happiness to my
destiny destiny must be fulfilled that is my chief Doctrine so figuring out what your destiny is it's the first step and then doing whatever every all these ideas that c in your mind to to Napoleon are just the pre prerequisite to action he's constantly competing think about it figure out what you want to do and then make it happen in the real world there's actually a quote from Mark andreon which one which is one of my favorite quotes
I've ever come across I cover this back on episode 50 and this is what Mark's about to say here uh Napoleon definitely uh would agree with and and I think the truth of this statement manifested in Napoleon's life the world is a very malleable place if you know what you want and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you
would think and so to that degree not only did did Napoleon buildt his own world but he built his own reality and so he has his own definitions of words this is how uh what he considers luck a consecutive series of great actions never is the result of chance and luck it is always a product of planning and genius is it because they are lucky that great men become great no but being great they have been able to master luck
what is luck the ability to exploit accidents the vulgar would call this luck but it in fact it is the characteristic of Genius when I got to that part made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson uh he said shallow men believe in luck they believe in circumstances strong men believe in cause and effect Napoleon believed in cause and effect back to this idea about going after your life
with maximum energy and drive and passion hesitation is fatal once an action is begun it must be followed through with the utmost exertion of the will and then a few pages later he tells us what we should be directing our will at and that is figuring out what your destiny is if I have any ambition it is so natural to me so innate so intimately linked with my existence that is like the blood that circulates in my veins
like the air that I breathe this guy has a way with words uh to aim at World Empire seemed to Napoleon a most natural thing so something you and I have talked about in the past is this idea where the greatest Founders it's not like they have a hundred you know different ideas they identify a handful of principles you see this over and over again they identify a handful of principles that are are important to them important to
the way they're building their business and they repeat them for decades it's the same case for Napoleon this is something that he's going to mention the first time that's mentioned I don't know 15 times in this book that he's shooting for immortality there is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men to have lived without Glory without leaving a trace of one's existence is to have not lived at all
remember that line because this is something that he's going to revisit he uses different words but that same idea to have lived without Glory without leaving a trace of your existence is to have not lived at all and then there's two quotes on this concept that you and I talk about all the time which is founder mentality founder mentality is really this idea it's like I can start something that changes the world around
me and so it talks about Napoleon's temperament the temperament is characterized by his dissatisfaction with the disorderly nature of the world such as he finds it he creates his own world entrepreneurs Founders are World Builders a couple Pages later now na in Napoleon's own words he gives us his definition of creation which I thought was fantastic again founder mentality this idea hey this thing doesn't exist I
can actually start something new that changes the world around me the greatest so is Napoleon's definition of creation creation the greatest improvization of the human mind is that which gives existence to the non-existent another theme that he's going to repeat over and over again is the fact that he believes in the great individual and after reading this book because Napoleon repeats it so much I think what past Founders are getting out
of studying Napoleon is is this just belief that you can actually change the world that you are a great individual and that you can have an effect on things around you and he's a bit of an elitist and you see this here without Great Men we have only mediocre men and if there had never been anything but mediocre men we would still be half Apes okay so that is the end of the introduction and now we get into from
here on out it's just quotes from Napoleon speaking directly to you and I what I thought about is the I just did I think it was episode 299 that fantastic new book on Steve Jobs was put out by uh Steve the Steve Jobs archive and the forward or the introduction of that book was written by Steve Jobs Widow uh Loren Powell jobs and she said something I think it might have been the first sentence uh in her introduction that I
thought was excellent and she says the best way to understand a person is to listen to that person directly that is what this book is for Napoleon and so one thing Napoleon I think would tell you and I is ask why things are the way they are and you need to think things through yourself a few pages ago he used the word illusions that the things that you think are actually possible like you're constrained by by an illusion and
so he says most sentiments are traditions we experience them because they have preceded us and so his point there is you can go on copying tradition and just doing every what every what future uh what previous generations have done over and over again or you can actually create something new and think for yourself a large part of the book is Napoleon breaking down various historical figures that he studied uh
many cases like okay I want this these traits from Alexander or I don't want this trait from Charlamagne or whatever the case is and one thing uh that he criticizes like uh he would analyze other previous generals and their battle plans and one thing he realizes like some people were just sitting around thinking too much and not acting and he says the great majority of men attend to what is necessary only when they feel in
need for it the precise time when it is too late another strength of Napoleon is he had uh extremely Advanced understanding of human psychology uh this is something he repeats over and over again men are moved by two levers only fear and self-interest a few few years later he says the same thing men are Guided by nothing else than self-interest this is something the founders of the advertising uh industry
like Albert Lasker Claude Hopkins uh David Oggy a generation later uh realized and this is something we can use in our commercial lives that you're wasting your time talking about your product or you're talking about your company you just appeal to interest the customer only cares what your product does for them humans are Guided by nothing else than self-interest and then Napoleon shows us his view on human nature there's a line
um I actually went back through my notes and readwise cuz it's like I've heard like there's the the way Napoleon thinks I would say it's very similar to this this line about Charlie monger and Cicero and poor Charlie's omac where he says his underlying philosophical view was one of deep and realistic cynicism about human nature I think he believed that about other humans and himself he says out he says I start out by
believing the worst I defy anyone to trick me men would have to be exceptional Rascals to be as bad as I assume them to be and then he immediately demonstrates that this applies to himself as well this is the thing about Napoleon he is unapologetically Extreme to maybe more than any other person I've ever read about he says my wife could have died and it would have not interfered for a quarter of an hour with the execution of
my plans and then later on we see another example of this this underlying philosophical view of deep and realistic cynicism about humans uh and life in general and in funny this is actually in a section called life Destiny and greatness your nephew Elliott has been killed on the battlefield that young man had acquired valuable military experience someday he would have been a most valuable officer he died gloriously
and facing the enemy he did not suffer for an instant what reasonable man would not have chosen such a death what man is there who in the visites of life would not have put down his money to buy such a way out of an often cont temptable world and then we go back to that reoccurring theme with Napoleon the fact that you go after life with maximum energy and drive and passion you actually impose your will on the world
uh he says one must have the will to live and be willing to die and he talks about this is actually interesting because I'm reading another biography of Anthony Bourdain who obviously committed suicide and this is something that Napoleon mentions a bunch that it's a mistake no matter what essentially the the mistake of suicide and we go back to his the way he has with words the man who kills himself on Monday night might
wish to live on Saturday and yet one kills oneself only once the man who breaking down under the weight of present evils ends his life commits a grave Injustice towards himself and yields to Despair and weakness to a momentary mood at the expense of his entire future existence so suicide to Napoleon is the worst way to die this is the worst way to live when on rising from sleep a man does not know what to do with himself and drags his tedious
existence from place to place when scanning his future he sees nothing but Dreadful monotony one day resembling the next when he asks himself why do I exist then in my opinion he is the most wretched of all and then he goes back to some of his favorite themes on immortality on life Destiny will greatness uh this is a repeated saying what is a great reputation a big noise the more noise make the farther it will
go laws institutions monuments Nations all of this passes but the noise it makes continues to vibrate through generations and then he's writing a letter to other people giving the advice that he gives himself to other people die young and I shall accept your death but not if you have lived without Glory without being useful to your country without leaving a trace of your existence for that is to have not lived
at all so that we've already heard him repeat that multiple times when I got to this section it made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Charlie Monger he says don't don't be too timid go at life with a little courage and then he's writing a letter to one of his generals and he repeats this this quest for immortality again this actually reminds me of uh there's a section at the end of Steve Jobs biography by wter Isaacson
that goes into what drove Steve Jobs that I think Echoes uh what what Napoleon is saying here everything on Earth is soon forgotten except the opinion we leave imprinted on history I want to read you this quote from the end of that Steve Jobs book by Isaacson I've read that book a few times the last time I made an episode on it was episode 214 if you want to listen to that and so this is Isaacson describing what drove
uh Steve Jobs and comparing him to other like other founders of his time he had neither uh Larry Ellison's conspicuous consumption needs nor Bill Gates philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high on the Forbes list he could get Instead This is going to remind me of Napoleon instead his ego needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy that would all people a dual
Legacy actually building Innovative products and building a lasting company he wanted to be in the pantheon with and indeed a notch above people like Edwin Lan Bill huet and David Packard and what did land huet and Packard have in common at the time that uh Steve Jobs was still alive when Isaacson was writing that it's that they were long dead and people were still talking about the Legacy they left behind go back to what Napoleon
just told us everything on Earth is soon forgotten except the opinion we leave imprinted on History Napolean going to keep repeating you got to find out what your destiny destiny is and then do everything you can to fulfill it Men of Genius are meteors destined to be consumed in lighting up their senty a man cannot Excel unless he is of a unique cast all my life I have sacrificed everything Comfort self-interest happiness to my destiny
destiny must be fulfilled that is my chief Doctrine and then he goes back to tying in Destiny with immortality and again this comes from knowing yourself when he said earlier in the book he's like you know my ambition is like the blood of my veins and the air I breathe it's just who I am it's it's a natural part of me I don't even notice its existence it is not enough for him to exist he must also be known he must know
himself until then all Endeavors are in vain all schemes will collapse and so something that you and I have in common with Napoleon is that we spend an excessive amount of time uh studying great people from history this is something that appears in the beginning of the book the end of the book this section is about Men of Destiny so he includes himself in there George Washington muhamad Jesus Christ
uh you know he talks about Frederick the great Alexander Alexander the Great Charlamagne just goes on and on but this was I thought was fascinating and it's fascinating because he's identifying what the English uh the country of England their view of the young uh you know upstart of America and their leader George Washington was just completely wrong and listen to what he says about Washington this is actually excellent uh
your nation the British called Washington a leader of rebels for a long time and refused to acknowledge either e him or the independence of his country but his success obliged them to change their minds and acknowledge both listen to his punchline what he's telling us it is Success which makes the great man think about that you failed to acknowledge Him or the independence of his country but his success obliged them
to change their minds and acknowledge both it is Success which makes the great man one of my favorite lines ever in any book that I've ever read for the podcast came back on episode I think it's 251 it's this biography this dual biography of Ben Franklin and George Washington if you haven't bought the book I think it's like 250 Pages 300 Pages I'd buy it and read it it's very fascinating because they have this lifelong partnership and
they their lives constantly intersect uh with each other over multiple decades but this really is the advantage that new companies have new startups right creating something new has over existing players if you think about the analogy between a young upstart in America and the British Empire at the time I'm going to read you this but I just saw so in readwise obviously I store all of my highlights right I have you know over
20,000 highlights from all the books that I've read and so I'm constantly rereading them and trying to figure out how stuff we've you and I have discussed in the past and that I've read in the past connects to what were like the book that I have in my hand and I'm reading when I got to this section I was like you know what that made me think of that is Napoleon is describing the British view of Washington in America well what
was Washington's View and America's view of the British on this note when I read this you know I don't know a year ago or whatever it was I wrote Washington was a badass and so it says one of Washington's biographers captured his view Washington's view of the American Revolution this is excellent essentially he saw the conflict as a struggle for power in which the colonists if Victorious destroyed British pretentions of superiority and
won control over half a continent what a line and that's the crazy thing is there was examples I think it was like two decades before that this actual War where Washington had realized wait the marketing of British superiority is not matching up with what I'm actually seeing them in the battlefield because they were trying to fight Washington was actually helping the British uh fight the Native Americans in that in uh in
that actual story in the book and he just realized like hey maybe uh there actually there is a weakness here and that we can actually attack that weakness and think about that is a struggle for power in which if we are victorious we will destroy British pretentions of superiority and we will win control over half a continent and what does Napoleon say it is Success which makes the great man and then he tells us one characteristic that
great effective men have and again you can make the argument that some some of these people are effective and maybe the results of what they actually focused on wasn't good for Humanity that's that's very that I completely in many cases I would agree with that but there is fascinating like parallel here I'm on the second book of this four-part biography that Robert Caro is writing on LBJ in the the first LBJ biography LBJ
has this line lynon Johnson has this line that if you do everything you will win I think Napoleon agrees with that statement all great events hang by a single thread the clever man takes advantage of everything neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity the less clever man by neglecting one thing sometimes misses everything that is such a good line the less clever man by neglecting one thing sometimes misses
everything Warren Buffett has a line that I found in this book called all I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there Buffett and Monger study in Simplicity and uncommon common sense that was episode 286 he says that we are individual opportunity driven we see Napoleon echoing that same sentiment here I had very few definitive ideas and the reason for this was that instead of seeking to control
circumstances I obeyed them and they forced me to change my mind all the time most of the time I had no definitive plans but only projects this is one of my favorite lines in the entire book this line is actually related to the next line where he's describing Alexander the first line is Imagination rules the world couple like a paragraph later he's describing Alexander he says Alexander believes himself a God and he wants to make
others believe it and that notion came from Alexander's imagination imagination rules the world now we get into his Napoleon's definition of ambition and really after I finish read reading the entire book I went back I always go through my highlights and read them multiple times and then I start updating notes with the context of everything that's going to come in the future from the book and I was like oh he's
describing himself here he could never quit uh ambition which overthrows governments and private fortunes which feeds on blood and crimes ambition is a violent and unthinking fever that ceases only when life ceases that is Napoleon's description of Napoleon there is only one thing to do in this world and that is to keep acquiring more and more money and power and Napoleon spends a lot of time talking about history essentially
what he's telling us is that humans don't learn from history it's the rare few that actually can change their behavior because again learning is not just memorizing information learning is changing behavior and so Napoleon says nation and individuals alike learn only from their own experience and most of the time from Misfortune so he's saying hey on average humans don't learn from history and then he goes right into
Napoleon trying to learn from history and there's all this these great men of history that he constantly brings up Alexander the Great is one of them Alexander had barely outgrown his Boyhood when with a handful of men he conquered a portion of the globe and so I'm going to pause before I finish that part what what playing out over the next few pages I realized it's like oh to me reading these biography is like watching
it's like what an athlete does where he watches a game tape right and he's like okay I want to emulate these traits that this this person has in their game and oh no I I want to avoid these other mistakes or maybe there's an advantage I can pick up here by the experience that this person had and so in Alexander when he goes describing what Alexander's doing to me he's like oh this is very much what Napoleon did so he's like I'll
grab these traits from Alexander and I'll use them in my life and he's talking about like how the hell did Alexander do this when he was just barely a boy and he did all this like what was his approach everything he did was calculated deeply carried out audaciously and managed wisely and then he goes right into analyzing St Louis and he's like oh I don't want to do with this guy remember in the introduction it
says that to Napoleon's mind in action was unbearable and so he says St Louis spent 8 months praying when he should have spent them marching fighting and consolidating his hold over his country in other words he wasn't using his thinking as a step to action goes into Frederick the great mentions him a couple times again more Napoleon learning from history uh on Frederick the great I think that he is one of those who knew their business best in
all respects Frederick was great above all at moments of great crisis this is the highest praise that can be given and then he has a great line where he's speaking about the French Revolution but I think this applies for your for what our purposes right studying History's Greatest Founders is in many cases studying like the birth of Industries and so when I read Napoleon say this a revolution could be neither made nor
stopped a revolution could be neither made nor stopped the only thing that can be done is for one or several of its children to give it a direction I think of commercial revolutions things that you and I studied like the birth of the internet uh the birth of human powered flight uh the birth of mass-produced automobiles with internal combustion engines these were revolutions that could be neither made nor sto and the
only thing to be done is for one or several of its Founders to give it a direction and later in the book he revisits that idea it may be possible to arrest The Surge of progress or to throttle it but not to destroy it a revolution can neither be made nor stop it may be possible to arrest The Surge of progress or to throttle it but not to destroy it another benefit of reading this book is that you see that Napoleon
you know for for his legacy for the fact that he has talked about hundreds of years after he died he was human and all humans are full of hypocrisies and contradictions and the editor of the book does a fantastic job of having Napoleon say something emphatically and then you know two years later because all the quotes have the year in which he said it or he wrote it and you realize it's like oh like he just contradicted
himself like we are all full of hypocrisies and contradictions in 1806 he said I say it once more I do not want any censorship of books because every book seller is made responsible for the work that he sells because I do not wish to take the responsibility for every nonsense that comes off the printing press and finally because I do not want some clerk to tyrannize over the mind and to mutilate genius and there is a
footnote at the bottom of this page in 1810 however Napoleon did establish book sens ship and then we see another example of of a thought an idea leading to action this thought that hey most of what human behavior is it's just Traditions that if you actually stop and ask like why are things like this that you realize a lot of the limits that you have are Illusions and you know he thinks on an unbelievably Grand scale it really just
makes you think bigger that you just realize that you don't have any limits and that life can be built to your specifications and to Napoleon it didn't matter if you were the leader of a country the leader of a religion if you got in his way he was going to do something about here's an example I am informing the pope of my plans in a few words if he does not acques I shall reduce him to the same status that he
held before Charlamagne since nothing induces the pope to behave reasonably he will see that I am powerful enough to do what my predecessors have done to depose a pope and he believed that you needed to control your own message uh that you could shape public opinion and so Napoleon was definitely a master of propaganda he believed and he explicitly stated that you know you need to guide public opinion and that you do that with
through the media and through information again for our purposes we're not trying to overthrow countries hopefully we're just trying to build great products and then make people aware of their existence and so I think it's very valuable to study some of the best uh companies and individuals uh they were able to like get their message out there this is a Napoleon's version um and he says uh the masses must be
guided without their noticing it it is necessary to Enlighten public opinion with ink and paper you can draw any picture you like only by telling the effects simply and with details can we convince them and he thought this was so important that he did it himself the not I left myself here is do it yourself act as your own minister of propaganda for your company the best example of this is when Steve Jobs came back to Apple every
Wednesday they'd have like a long three-hour meeting and go over all the marketing because he's like hey we we already build great products I want every single person on the planet to own an Apple device and for me to do for us to do that we have to become a great marketing company and so my interpretation of what he was telling us is like if you truly believe that the product and the service that you're offering makes somebody else's life
better you have a moral obligation to get good at marketing because that's how you make them aware of its existence and so Napoleon and and Steve was demonstrating with his actions how important it was because he there was a book I read I think it's called insanely simple it was written by a guy that actually worked on the advertising and reported directly Steve and he says like there wouldn't be a billboard in
Missouri coming out without Steve Jobs approving it in himself like literally saying he's like I'm seeing every single external piece of marketing communication to our customers before it goes through and I'm going to approve it we see Napoleon doing something similar like this Napoleon dictated all important Army bulletins himself their purpose was multiple to inform the public to counter rumor rumors to mislead the enemy and to stir up
enthusiasm he served as his own minister of propaganda the difference being once you go down that path and you're the Sovereign of a Nation uh he's he's going to have complete control this is just something that reappears over in human nature it's never going to stop if you you give somebody unlimited power they're going to want to control the information flow and we see this in the early 1800s when Napoleon was being
shaved I used to read the newspapers to him I would always begin with the French papers skip it skip it he used to say when I read the French papers I know what's in them they only say what I tell them to and so this idea that Napoleon was a micromanager reappears in multiple cases he's talking about the propaganda aspect he he micromanaged but he also micromanaged things that he probably shouldn't have micromanaged but that's a
part of his personality and he says something that actually cont dick with his actions and he's talking about managing it's under the the section of the book called The Art of ruling so the good thing about the book is I read it chronologically but if you happen to pick up this book you could just I don't you definitely don't have to read it chronologically it is just broken down and grouped by subject and I think the
book is actually better served if you just pick it up and hey what did he say on ruling what did he say on History what did he say on the human heart what did he say on life Destiny and greatness and just go to the part that you're Happ happen to be interested in well what was fascinating is this is another example of how he's constantly contradicting himself and he's talking about this is how I'm a great ruler the art of ruling
consists in making others work rather than in wearing oneself out that's he definitely wore himself out and so uh the the editor says this is good advice but the following anecdote illustrates Napoleon's inability to leave even the most trivial details to others and so Napoleon's first wife Josephine is going to like be healed in natural Waters don't worry about that but this is just hilarious what he did Napoleon called me
and said Josephine is leaving tomorrow for her water cure I must dictate her itinerary and outline her conduct and so he's calling this guy he's like okay I'm going to dictate you what we need to do write everything down and I'm about to say and this is a crazy thing and then he dictated 21 large sheets of paper so this guy's the emperor of France when he's doing this okay and it's like he's got a million things to worry about and
again I think the editor nailed it here Napoleon's inability to leave even the most trivial detail to others and so when you study Napoleon something that pops up a lot is he just spends so much time communicating with his troops and I think one of the reasons is is because he really does believe how powerful the mind is the morale of your troops who are either strong and Victorious or weak and beaten
depending on which they think they will be so he spends an unbelievable amount of time sharing information with them and really guiding what they think and it is in the war section that we get just how extreme I don't know if he's psychopath or what you want to call it but this is an example of that uh Napoleon while watching the city burn says it's like vvus erupting don't you think this is a beautiful sight and the
person standing next to him says this is horrible sire and this is Napoleon's response but remember Gentlemen The Corpse of an enemy always smells sweet there's just one uh story he's telling me is he's just walking past thousands of dead corpses and yet there's an injured dog and he's like what is wrong with me like I'm brought to tears and Agony over this Injured Dog and I didn't even weep or think twice about passing
all these dead humans and I bring that up and I I want to repeat that because I think it's really important to understand like you and I are right now we're studying one of the most extreme people that have ever lived and he was extreme in mindset and action in fact in addition to reading this book I read another book on Napoleon I may turn it into uh like a bonus episode or something it's called the roots of
strategy the five greatest military Classics of all time complete in one volume and it's all these military generals throughout history I think the book is very very old but the introduction to Napoleon gives us a description of just how Dre this person's lived experience was Napoleon fought more battles than Alexander Hannibal and Julius Caesar combined he is beyond any doubt the greatest of European soldiers and so part of this
extreme uh way that that Napoleon went out at life is he's just it goes back to this idea it's like the rules are just words written down on paper and they apply to other people and they do not apply to me and I'm going to tie this with something else that um I learned as well so in this section he's having a conversation with this guy named General Mack General Mack was a commander of this a uh of the Austrian forces that
just surrendered to Napoleon and so they're having this conversation and Max says to Napoleon it is said that your majesty has troops marching through Switzerland whose neutrality we have respected so Switzerland is supposed to be a neutral country that is agreed upon uh you're just violating their neutrality we refuse to do that right and other words saying you're not fighting Fair which this guy had a really poor understanding of of human
nature and the psychology of humans Napoleon responds I have not recognized its neutrality consequently I have a right to enter its territory again other rules don't apply their rules are for other people they are not for Napoleon ma ah we were always the dupes of our good faith and then he continues that Napoleon not only violated the neutrality of Switzerland he also did it for Prussia which gave him an advantage
in this battle against Mack he says your majesty had also violated neutrality of Prussia thus gaining 8 days in affecting the junction of your forces uh this premature Junction gave you the opportunity to crush us and yet if I had wished to violate Prussian territory I could have easily cut off your retreat Napoleon responds first by smiling and then says why didn't you do it and so this to me is one of the most important
reasons to study history and to read biographies because the in present day right people are alive now they're always going to be presenting like their best side to to the public life just something humans do over and over again in these stories right uh mostly people long dead they really reveal not human like human behavior as we want it to be but how it actually is this idea where you think you're engaged in combat in an
AC of War you're trying to kill each other the person that kills the most other people wins and you think this guy is going to give he's going to care about neutrality agreement in Switzerland and Prussia why would he not care Napoleon thought he was destined to rule the world and this is the important part there's napoleons alive today this personality type maybe not you know conquering other nations and maybe that
could occur but there's napoleons in politics in business in sports in everyday life I'm going to give you an example so I'm going to leave a link Down Below in this fantastic episode of invest like the best my friend Sam Hy I think it's called find your people but Sam Hy is the one that turned me on to like really push me to to read Caro I had read the power broker but I had never gotten to Caro's multiple part
series on lynon Johnson and he said something in this interview that uh and this podcast that I wrote down and I really think applies to what is this story with General Mack misunder understanding human psychology to the detriment he's lucky he's alive this this misunderstanding could have killed him this is why it's so important to understand humans as they actually are not as we want them to be so Sam says Robert Caro the author of the power
broker in the four-part series hopefully five-part series on lynon Johnson right Robert Carl profiled two men whose seeds were not high in the tournament of Life Napoleon's seed was not high they were without many advantages and to get all the way to the top you probably had to sacrifice everything to that effort The Meta lesson is if you are not willing to pay that PR price presume someone else
will General Mack was not willing to pay that price Napoleon was Sam continues if you want something like the presidency and then I wrote or being a billionaire or building a very valuable company you should presume there is someone out there who will devote all their time money relationships sense of Ethics is that not what we're have where we are in the book this idea where Max saying this is unethical what you Napoleon doesn't
give a about your ethics you should presume there is someone out there who devote all their time money relationship sense of Ethics everything in sacrifice of that one goal of course that person would win that race in many ways in the biographies that you and I go over it's not that we in many cases a lot of them get to the their Liv it's almost like a cautionary tale right it's just like I want to know these people exist not so
necessarily like a be like them so I could avoid them they will chew you up and spit you out they will destroy everything in their path in many cases to get what they want I do not want to be roadkill on the modern day Napoleon's path to glory and then Napoleon goes into building the importance of building his Army's morale again he's building an army we're you and I are building teams right this this idea that you have to
influence the way people they're their the way they feel there their perception of the events that are taking place inside of your company inside of your team he's doing the exact same thing but he's doing this in 1796 when I arrived the Army's morale was being undermined by all the malcontents I took strong measures and I used every means to reorganize the supplies and then victory has done the rest momentum solves
everything winning solves everything in the introduction he talks about it's it's super important to be successful in your endeavors be successful I judge only by the results of their actions is what he was quoted at saying winning solves everything and this guy had an unbelievable way with words and this is what he says you know what words can do to soldiers so then he gives a speech in 1786 to his soldiers soldiers you are
ill-fed and almost naked the government owes you a great deal but it can do nothing for you your patience and courage do you honor but give you neither worldly Goods nor Glory I shall lead you I shall lead you into the most f planes on Earth so he's saying the government owes you owes you a bunch they've done nothing I will your patience and courage do you honor but give you neither worldly Goods nor Glory
I shall lead you into the most fertile Plains on Earth there you shall find great cities and Rich provinces there you shall find honor glory and riches and why is he doing this because he's saying a general so me you and I are going to change that word a leader right a general a Leader's principal Talent consists in knowing the mentality of his soldiers and in winning their confidence a Leader's principal Talent consists in
knowing the mentality of your team and winning their confidence so then we get into some of Napoleon's maxims for uh This Is The Art of War uh at the beginning of a campaign much thought should be given to whether a strategy is to be adopted however once the offensive has started it must be sustained to the last extremity so that's another example of this idea for him uh thoughts are only valuable to the degree that they lead to actions uh this
is going to remind me of Steve Jobs this is something that Napoleon repeated the Ancients had a great advantage over us in that their armies were not trailed by a second Army of pen pushers and so this is about Napoleon's notion of this ideal he called uh squareness so squareness is actually an equilibrium of intellect and character his definition of character would be physical courage as well as perseverance
and daring so you want you to be courageous not quitting and a little bit of uh daring and bold right and so you want to have equal distributions of character and intelligence and individuals that had an equilibrium of those two characteristics were described as squareness which is a which is a high complement from Napoleon this is another idea that the poing goes into like what your greatest fear in life should be and
that's actually not death but a wasted life life these three things you must always keep in mind concentration of strength activity and a firm resolve to perish gloriously these are the three principles of the military art which have disposed luck in my favor in all my operations death is nothing but to live defeated and without glory is to die every day and then he goes back to this idea this LBJ lynon Johnson idea if you
do everything you will win Napoleon prepared to such an extraordinary degree and this is part of the reason why War consist of nothing but accidents and that a commander should never Overlook anything that might enable him to exploit these accidents the vulgar call this luck but it in fact is a characteristic of Genius back to this idea of paying attention to the tiniest details sometimes a single battle
decides everything and sometimes too the slightest circumstance decides the battle little things are big things is how I would summarize what he saying there this uh he's talking about how do you learn uh how to be a great General really what he's saying here uh I wrote same with entrepreneurship knowledge of the grand principles of warfare can be acquired only through the study of military history and of battles of the
great captains and through experience so you and I are doing this for business right uh there are no precise determinant rules everything depends on the character that nature has bestowed on the individual that is so good knowledge of the grand principles of warfare can be acquired only through the study of military history and of the battles of the great captains and through experience obviously you and I are using that for metaphor there are no
precise determinant rules everything depends on the character that nature has bestowed on the individual people are power law and the best ones can change everything and then he describes his personal historical curriculum the principles of warfare are those which guided the great captains whose High Deeds history has transmitted to us Alexander Hannibal Caesar uh names a bunch of other ones Frederick the great
the history of their 83 campaigns would constitute a complete treaties on The Art of War the principles that must be followed in defensive and offensive Warfare would flow from it as from a common source and so then he talks about not only as he learning from these people but they learned from each other uh Caesar's principles were the same as Alexander's and Hannibal to keep his forces United to be vulnerable at no
point to strike speedily at critical points to make use of every possible opportunity of increasing his chances of Victory on the battlefield think about it let me pause right there to make use of every possible opportunity of increasing his chances of victory on the battlefield do everything and you will win po that maximum pops up over and over again in the book that's another way of him saying the same thing to make
use of every possible opportunity of increasing your chances for victory Caesar took great risks in the adventures into which he was pushed by his boldness his genius got him out of his difficulties he was a man whose genius and boldness were equally great so that's another example of this this idea of squareness this equilibrium of two valuable traits that Napoleon seemed to admire and value he's running through all these anecdotes on all these
historical people uh this is in The Art of War section of the book of all what he learned from studying them again he's watching game tape right and he's just going to repeat this this this goes on for multiple pages and really what I wrote down is Napoleon admires boldness Napoleon wants you to be bold the boldness and length of these marches astonished France and until they were justified by success they were the
target of the CR of and criticism of mediocre men so he's talking about people that came before him what distinguished Frederick the great most is not the cleverness of his moves but his boldness he's using the word bold again and then the editor does a fantastic job of tying all this together for us boldness is the common quality signaled out by Napoleon in the seven Great generals whom he cites as examples what is the opposite of
boldness that would probably be timidity right and that he's saying right here then when it comes to planning he is timid what does that mean so he uses this word called pu pusillanimous which is showing a lack of courage or determination and timid timid there's no man more pusam linous than I when I am planning a campaign I purposely exaggerate all the dangers and all the calamities that the circumstances make
possible I am in a thoroughly painful state of agitation during planning once I made up my mind everything is forgotten except what leads to success so timid and careful when planning yet bold and relentless when acting and an odd thing popped in my mind when he was uh when I got to the section cuz he's like you know I'm essentially planning for every worst case possible uh the worst case possible
making sure I have all these contingencies one of my favorite things that Paul Graham not only his essays are fantastic but then you can reduce some of the lines down to like maximum that you can remember and one of the things he says for for company Founders is that you need to be be hard to kill be hard to kill and so I'm going to read from Paul Gram's essay I'm pretty sure this is episode 27 5 he says the way to make
a a startup or any business Recession Proof is to do exactly what you should do anyways run it as cheaply as possible the main theme from the history of Entrepreneurship if you could pick one thing that reoccurs over and over again is this idea that you need to watch your costs it is by far the most common trait that all of the people the UN and I study have right they are fanatical about the expense side of their business
for years I've been telling Founders that the shest route to success is to be the Cockroaches of the corporate world the immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money so the cheaper your company is to operate the harder it is to kill and what is Napoleon doing in that paragraph I just read to you he's figuring out okay how can I make my Army hard to kill and then towards the end of his
life he's going back and trying to figure out like he surveys his career and he's talking about like how he's going to be remembered in history I'm going to read you the paragraph and I'm going to my m one of my main takeaways from the book or reoccurring thought I had when I was going through the book it will be argued at length whether my absolute Authority and my arbitrary action were the effect of my character
or my of my calculations whether they were caused by my inclination or by force of circumstance whether I waged constant warfare that's one way to put it he waged constant Warfare we just said that other book said he did more
battles than what Caesar Hannibal and Alexander combin whether I wage constant Warfare to indulge indulge my personal taste or whether I was pushed into it against my will whether my immense ambition was spurred by lust for power
or thirst for Glory or for the necessity of establishing order are my love of general warfare and it's when I get to this page and I had reread all of my highlights and I'm almost at the end of the book and I realized I like okay this is my main takeaway from spending time with Napoleon right because it's like to hold this book in your hand is to literally go into his mind and and live there for you know it took me eight days
to really absorb this book and it's not that long it's just really trying to think about what the hell he's trying to convey to us and so my main take away from spending all the time withon is like whatever you do do it constantly and massively increase this is a note to myself whatever you do do it constantly and massively increase the scope of your ambition as I was reading this book I was constantly thinking I'm not doing
enough he goes back to this idea that winning is winning solves everything winning is the main thing and that you need to keep the main thing the main thing my power is dependent on my glory and my glory on my victories my power would fail my power would fall if I did did not base it on still more glory and still more victories Conquest has made me what I am and Conquest alone can keep me there and then he goes back to this
idea that he sacrificed everything his comfort everything in life to fulfill what he thought was his Destiny power is my mistress I have worked too hard at her Conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me and it goes back to this idea that ambition is all consuming right it only ceases it's a fire that burns and it only is extinguish until that life is extinguished he's talking about himself I know what this has cost
me the sufferings the sleepless nights the scheming remember the God of War and the god of success are Marching alongside me my soul is made of marble lightning has found no grip on it and has had to slide off as far as my
detractors I have no fear of becoming their victim they will be biting into Granite I wanted to rule the world and in order to do this I needed unlimited power power I wanted to rule the world who wouldn't have in my place the world
begged me to govern it I realized that the destiny the future and the Fatherland depended on my soulle person and that is where I'll leave it for the full story highly recommend buying the book this is another hard to find out of print book like I said it was first published in 1955 I paid like $130 for it I've seen it for sale for as much as like $500 and $22,000 I'll leave a link down below I think there was two
copies I was able to find uh on bookfinder.com but I will also leave the Amazon link because the the inventory on Amazon is constantly updated so if you buy the book If you happen to find the book and you use that link you'll be supporting podcast at the same time another way to support the podcast is to sign up for Founders premium and if you subscribe to that you can listen to the AMA they ask me anything episodes that I
record each episode is me answering one question I think I've done like 20 I'm going to do a lot more because uh that allows me to make them now that I'm doing episodes based on one individual uh question allows me to make episodes a lot faster if that sounds interesting to you that link is down below and available at Founders podcast.com as well that is 32 books down 1,000 too and I'll talk to you again soon