Is the quote Religious wars are basically people killing each other over who was the better imaginary friend really from Napoleon Bonaparte - Can someone refer to the text where you can find it?

Answer 1

It is very unlikely that this is an actual quote. One clue is that it is found on several humor websites. Another is the language-- the concept of an "imaginary friend" is never mentioned by Napoleon in any of the quotes that are actually sourced and able to be traced to him (his writings, his letters, etc). It is true that Napoleon was a skeptic about religion and expressed a number of doubts about Christianity; he also spoke out about what he considered to be the excesses of religious belief. But that said, he was quite willing to use religion when it suited his political purposes. A final word of caution about questionable quotes: beware of the internet tendency to take a modern idea and attribute it to somebody from the past. My own favorite example of this is: "The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you never know if they are genuine." -Abraham Lincoln