Napoleon Hill

About Napoleon Hill

Overview

Oliver Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American self-help author and conman. He is best known for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937), which is among the best-selling self-help books of all time. Hill's works insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one's life. Most of his books were promoted as expounding principles to achieve "success". Hill is a controversial figure. Accused of fraud, modern historians also doubt many of his claims, such as that he met Andrew Carnegie and that he was an attorney. Gizmodo has called him "the most famous conman you've probably never heard of". Life and career Childhood Hill was born in a one-room cabin near the Appalachian town of Pound in southwest Virginia. His parents were James Monroe Hill and Sarah Sylvania (Blair), and he was the grandson of James Madison Hill and Elizabeth (Jones). His grandfather came to the United States from England and settled in southwestern Virginia in 1847. His father was an unofficial dentist and was also a moonshiner.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.”
— A maxim of Hill's, specifically cited as such, in Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude (1960), co-authored with W. Clement Stone, Ch. 14, p. 222.
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, and burning desire, can be translated into riches. Use auto-suggestion, have faith, imagination and overcome fear and time is your opposite player as in checkerboard.”
— As quoted in Self-Motivation Through Risk Taking! : Are You Leading Or Do You Wither with Problems? (2005) by M. Nadarajan Munisamy <!-- part of this was cited to be from Think and Grow Rich (1938), but this does not appear to be correct :
“The greatest achievements of men, were at first, nothing but dreams of the minds of men who knew that dreams are the seedlings of all achievements. A burning desire, to be and to do, is the starting point, from which the dreamer must take off”
— The Science of Personal Achievement (Audio - Nightingale-Conant).

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.