Napoleon Hill
The author of Think and Grow Rich, the book nearly every teacher on this site started with.
- Known for
- Think and Grow Rich (1937); The Law of Success
- In The Secret
- No. He died in 1970, but the film's teachers quote him constantly
- Core idea
- A definite chief aim, held with faith and backed by a mastermind group
- Sells
- The Napoleon Hill Foundation publishes his books and licenses courses
- Status
- Died 1970
What he taught
Think and Grow Rich lays out thirteen principles, among them desire, faith, autosuggestion, specialised knowledge, persistence and the mastermind. Almost every idea in the modern field can be traced to a chapter of it.
What to know
Hill said the book came from a commission by Andrew Carnegie and interviews with hundreds of successful men. Biographers and journalists have found little evidence for those meetings, and his own business history was troubled. The book stands on whether its principles work for you.
Where it stops
Hill tells you to develop faith and a burning desire. He is less clear on how, beyond repeating a written statement twice a day. Later teachers, Proctor above all, spent careers filling that gap.
The verdict
Read it. It costs almost nothing, and it shows where the rest of this field got its ideas.
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