What Motivates People - Great Speeches of History

A man does not get himself killed for a few half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify the man. Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon, who once persuaded several hundred thousand people to march cheerfully toward cannon fire, understood something that every manager with a budget spreadsheet keeps rediscovering and then forgetting with each generation. Nobody gives their life for a few sous a day. They give it for meaning, for glory, for the person standing next to them, and for the story they get to tell themselves about who they are. There is a small, delicious irony here. This exact quote gets pasted onto motivational graphics by the same people who would never dream of mentioning the other half of Napoleon's method. Because the man who told you to speak to the soul also built an enormous bureaucracy of medals, invented the Legion of Honor, handed out titles like party favors, and made very sure the plunder kept flowing back from the…