Adolphe Thiers

"He was...an intellectual lightweight. This is apparent in his voluminous histories of the Revolution, Consulate and Empire. He boasted that his books were the sensation of his century. Perhaps, but they are no longer read in our own. Thiers offered a well written, sometimes dramatic, narrative undistinguished by its depth of analysis. Intellectual or socio-economic influences upon history are absent from his work. His originality lay with the fact that he was the first to write of France's recent past in relatively dispassionate terms, not an easy task in his day, although he was unable to stifle his great admiration for Napoleon."

"What do you expect me to think of Thiers? There's no one who detested me more... Thiers was a man who firmly abstained from having an idea, who literally had no perception of anything. During the Commune he did the same as he had done in the Rue Transonain, and with the same ferocity. And not only did he do it, but he boasted and crowed about it. Did I tell you about the abominable act he committed? After having promised to leave the Parisians their guns, he took them away—which was the cause of everything that happened... He was one of those hide-bound fools who fancy that you can achieve something with an order written on a piece of paper."

"It fell to the liberal statesman, academician, and historian Adolphe Thiers to forge this broader synthesis in his Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire (1845–1862). Begun under the July Monarchy, continued under the Republic, and concluded under the Second Empire, this 20-volume work sold more than a million copies, and established Thiers' reputation as France's "national historian" (as well as his fortune). The author was supremely well placed to produce such a work. From his early years at school in Marseilles he had been fascinated by Napoleon, and like many men of his generation his obsession with the Emperor continued well into his adult life. Bringing back Napoleon's remains for burial in Paris had been his idea, although he was out of office by the time the cendres were returned to Paris."

"You should never hand over a country to one man, whoever the man, whatever the circumstances."

"It [a republic] is the form of government which divides us the least."

"Thiers was the savage, limited type of bourgeois who steeps himself in blood without flinching."

""Man soll nie seine Freiheit veräußern und"

"Der König herrscht, aber er regiert nicht."