Napoleon
Hill (October 26,
1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American author who was one of the earliest
producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. He is widely
considered to be one of the great writers on success. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich (1937), is one of the best-selling books of all time (at
the time of Hill's death in 1970, Think
and Grow Rich had sold 20 million copies). Hill's works
examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal
success. He became an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to
1936. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve"
is one of Hill's hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a
formula for it that puts success in reach of the average person, were the focal
points of Hill's books.
Life & Works
According to his official biographer Tom Butler-Bowdon, Napoleon Hill was
born in a one-room cabin in the Appalachian
town of Pound in Southwest Virginia. Hill's mother died when he was eight
years old, and his father remarried two years later. At the age of 13, Hill
began writing as a "mountain
reporter" for small-town newspapers in the area of Wise County, Virginia. He later used his
earnings as a reporter to enter law school, but soon he had to withdraw for
financial reasons.
Influence
of Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919)
Hill considered the turning point in his life
to have occurred in the year 1908 with his assignment, as part of a series of
articles about famous and successful men, to interview the industrialist Andrew Carnegie. At the time, Carnegie
was one of the most powerful men in the world. Hill discovered that Carnegie
believed that the process of success could be outlined in a simple formula that
anyone would be able to understand and achieve. Impressed with Hill, Carnegie
asked him if he was up to the task of putting together this information, to
interview or analyze over 500 successful men and women, many of them
millionaires, in order to discover and publish this formula for success.
The
Philosophy of Achievement
As a result of Hill's studies via
Carnegie's introductions, the Philosophy
of Achievement was offered as a formula for rags-to-riches success by Hill
and Carnegie, published initially in 1925 as a multi-volume study course called
The Law of Success, later
re-released in 1928 in an abridged version under the same title. The
Achievement formula was detailed further and published in home-study courses,
including the seventeen-volume "Mental
Dynamite" series until 1941.
Hill later called his personal
success teachings "The Philosophy of
Achievement", and he considered freedom, democracy, capitalism, and
harmony to be important contributing elements to this philosophy. Hill claimed
throughout his writings that without these foundations upon which to build,
successful personal achievements were not possible. He contrasted his
philosophy with others' and thought that the Achievement Philosophy was
superior. He felt that it was responsible for the success Americans enjoyed for
the better part of two centuries. Negative emotions such as fear, selfishness,
etc., had no part to play in his philosophy. Hill considered those emotions to
be the source of failure for unsuccessful people.
The secret of achievement was
tantalizingly offered to readers of Think and Grow Rich, but Hill felt
readers would benefit most if they discovered it for themselves. Although most
readers feel that he never explicitly identified this secret, he offers these
words about 20 pages into the book: If you truly desire money so keenly that
your desire is an obsession, you will have no difficulty in convincing yourself
that you will acquire it. The object is to want money, and to be so determined
to have it that you convince yourself that you will have it. . . You may as
well know, right here, that you can never have riches in great quantities
unless you work yourself into a white heat of desire for money, and actually
believe you will possess it.
He presented the idea of a "Definite Major Purpose" as a
challenge to his readers in order to make them ask themselves, "In what do
I truly believe?" According to Hill, 98% of people had few or no firm
beliefs, and this alone put true success firmly out of their reach.
One of Hill's most moving stories
was about his own son, Blair. He tells how his son was an inspiration to him,
because although Blair was born without ears, without any normal hearing organs
at all, even though his doctor told Hill that his son would neither be able to
hear nor speak, Blair grew up to be able to hear and speak almost normally.
Hill tells how his son, in his last year of college, picked up the manuscript
of chapter two of Think and Grow Rich, discovered Hill's secret for
himself and went on to be an inspiration for hundreds and thousands of people
who could not hear or speak.
From 1952 to 1962, Hill taught his Philosophy
of Personal Achievement – Lectures on "Science of Success" in
association with W. Clement Stone. In 1960, Hill and Stone co-authored the
book, Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude. Norman Vincent Peale
stated "These two men [Hill and Stone] have the rare gift of inspiring and
helping people...In fact; I owe them both a personal debt of gratitude for the
helpful guidance I have received from their writings."
Think and Grow Rich remains the top seller of Napoleon Hill's books – a perennial
best-seller after 70 years (Business Week Magazine's Best-Seller List
ranked Think and Grow Rich as the sixth best-selling paperback business
book 70 years after it was first published). Think and Grow Rich is
listed in John C. Maxwell's A Lifetime "Must Read" Books List.
Hill's numerous books have sold
millions of copies, showing that the secret of achievement is still highly
sought-after by many today. Hill dealt with many controversial subjects through
his writings including racism, slavery, oppression, failure, revolution, war
and poverty. Persevering and then succeeding in spite of these obstacles using
the Philosophy of Achievement, Hill stated, was the responsibility of every human.
Today's
philosophy-of-success teachers still use the research formulas taught by Hill
to expand their students' knowledge of personal development.
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