“There is no such thing as an absolute despotism; it is only relative. A man cannot wholly free himself from obligation to his fellows. 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.”

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

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Napoleon I of France 259
French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French 1769–1821

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