Oliver Napoleon Hill was an American self-help author. He is known best for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937) which is among the 10 best-selling self-help books of all time. Think and Grow Rich offers principles for attaining success in endeavour, which Napoleon Hill gathered from studying and interviewing 500 highly successful people at the time. Even though the book was first published in 1937, its success principles stand the test of time and are all applicable today. Hill’s work insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one’s life. Most of his books were promoted as expounding principles to achieve “success”.
Some of the best quotes from Napoleon Hill are listed below.
- “A genius is simply one who has taken full possession of his own mind and directed it toward objectives of his own choosing, without permitting outside influences to discourage or mislead him.” – Napoleon Hill
- “A positive mind finds a way it can be done; A negative mind looks for all the ways it can’t be done.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Action is the real measure of intelligence.” – Napoleon Hill
- “All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.” – Napoleon Hill
- “All thoughts which have been emotionalized (given feeling) and mixed with faith (expectancy), begin immediately to translate themselves into their physical equivalent.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Anything you do to and for another person, you do it to and for yourself.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act on building the life you desire.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Edison failed 10,000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win – essential to success.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Everyone faces defeat. It may be a stepping-stone or a stumbling block, depending on the mental attitude with which it is faced.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Fear, the worst of all enemies, can be effectively cured by forced repetition of acts of courage.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and never the result of selfishness.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Hold a picture of yourself and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.” – Napoleon Hill
- “If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way.” – Napoleon Hill
- “If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.” – Napoleon Hill
- “If you don’t know what you want, don’t say you never had a chance.” – Napoleon Hill
- “If you give up before your goal is reached you’re a quitter. A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.” – Napoleon Hill
- “If you want the mind to pick up an idea and to form a habit so that the mind will automatically act upon that idea, you’ve got to tell the mind what you want, over and over and over again.” – Napoleon Hill
- “If you want to do something, work yourself into a state of wild enthusiasm and go to work where you stand, even if it’s nothing more than drawing a picture in your mind of the thing you want to do, and keep drawing that picture, making it more vivid all the time.” – Napoleon Hill
- “It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.” – Napoleon Hill
- “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others succeed.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Keep your mind fixed on what you want in life: not on what you don’t want.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Knowledge is only potential power.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Knowledge is power. It is nothing of the sort! Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organised into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Life reflects your own thoughts back to you.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Most great people have achieved their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.” – Napoleon Hill
- “No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.” – Napoleon Hill
- “No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.” – Napoleon Hill
- “No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it.” – Napoleon Hill
- “No one is ready for a think until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be belief, not mere hope or wish. Open-mindedness is essential for belief. Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage and belief.” – Napoleon Hill
- “One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat!” – Napoleon Hill
- “Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by “opinions” when you reach decisions, you will not succeed in any undertaking.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Our minds become magnetised with the dominating thoughts we hold in our minds and these magnets attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonise with the nature of our dominating thoughts.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Our only limitations are those we set up in our minds.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Plan your work and work your plan.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Remember that your dominating thoughts attract, through a definite law of nature, by the shortest and most convenient route, their physical counterpart. Be careful what your thoughts dwell upon.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Set aside a definite amount for investment, even if it’s only as small as a dollar a week or even 50 cents a week. It’s not the amount that’s important, it’s the habit of being resourceful and frugal.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Some people dream of success, while others wake up and work hard at it.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Success comes to those who become success conscious.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Successful men become successful only because they acquire the habit of thinking in terms of success.” – Napoleon Hill
- “The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.” – Napoleon Hill
- “The cause of depression is traceable directly to the worldwide habit of trying to reap without sowing.” – Napoleon Hill
- “The Individual with a negative mental attitude attracts trouble as a magnet attracts steel filings.” – Napoleon Hill
- “The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.” – Napoleon Hill
- “The more you give, the more comes back to you.” – Napoleon Hill
- “The reason man may become the master of his own destiny is because he has the power to influence his own subconscious mind.” – Napoleon Hill
- “The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.” – Napoleon Hill
- “The subconscious mind only knows what you tell it, or what you allow other people to tell it, or what you allow the circumstance of life to tell it…It accepts the things that you send over, and if you send over predominating thoughts on poverty and ill health and failure, that’s exactly what you’ll get.” – Napoleon Hill
- “There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge, both poverty and riches are the offspring of thought.” – Napoleon Hill
- “There is but one dependable method of accumulating and legally holding riches, and that is by rendering useful service.” – Napoleon Hill
- “There is no substitute for persistence. The person who makes persistence his watch-word, discovers that “Old Man Failure” finally becomes tired, and makes his departure. Failure cannot cope with persistence.” – Napoleon Hill
- “There is no such thing as something for nothing.” – Napoleon Hill
- “There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” – Napoleon Hill
- “There is one weakness in people for which there is no remedy. It is the universal weakness of lack of ambition.” – Napoleon Hill
- “To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and don’t worry about darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Whatever it is that you lack in education, or knowledge, or influence, you can always obtain it through somebody who has it. Exchange of favours and exchange of knowledge is one of the greatest exchanges in the world.” – Napoleon Hill
- “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.” – Napoleon Hill
- “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill
- “When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.” – Napoleon Hill
- “You can think your way into or out of almost any circumstance, good or bad.” – Napoleon Hill
- “You have a brain and mind of your own. Use it, and reach your own decisions.” – Napoleon Hill
- “You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.” – Napoleon Hill
- “You will resemble, tomorrow, the dominating thoughts that you keep alive in your mind today!” – Napoleon Hill
