44 Life-Changing Quotes from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich Explained
Regardless of how meta-physical you want to get, the mindset that Napoleon Hill advocates is a tremendous tool when setting out to achieve the “impossible.”
According to the author’s preface in the legendary “Think & Grow Rich,” first published in 1937, this mindset was also that of the most successful people of the age, such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and Theodore Roosevelt – just to name a few. This “secret” idea which is also know as the Law of Attraction has since been passed on and is now being put to use by countless self-made millionaires across the globe.
These Napoleon Hill quotes are the keys to you realizing your potential, conquering yourself and becoming the person you choose to be.
“We are the Masters of our fate, the Captains of our Souls, because we have the power to control our thoughts”
– Napoleon Hill
“An intangible impulse of thought can be transmuted into its physical counterpart”
– Napoleon Hill
“If you fail to control your own mind, you may be sure that you will control nothing else”
– Napoleon Hill
A fundamental part of Napoleon Hill’s idea of having thoughts transformed into things is to act on intuition, in order to start receiving the physical counterpart of the thought. In order to do so, one has to recognize and seize opportunity whenever it presents itself and not succumb to “temporary defeat:”
“That is one of the tricks of opportunity. It has a sly habit of slipping in by the back door, and often it comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. Perhaps this is why so many fail to recognize opportunity”
– Napoleon Hill
“One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat”
– Napoleon Hill
“Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach”
– Napoleon Hill
“When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once again toward your coveted goal”
– Napoleon Hill
So what this all means is that there is no such thing as “impossible,” because the only limitations to what life you can create are the ones in your mind. Which means that you must first eliminate the impossible by adopting this mindset:
“A great many years ago I purchased a fine dictionary. The first thing I did with it was to turn to the word ‘impossible,’ and neatly clip it out of the book. That would not be an unwise thing for you to do”
– Napoleon Hill
“Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and 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
“No one ever is defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality”
– Napoleon Hill
“Wishing will not bring riches. But desiring riches with a state of mind that becomes an obsession, then planning definite ways and means to acquire riches, and backing those plan with persistence which does not recognize failure, will bring riches”
– Napoleon Hill
When defeat, as well as the notion of "impossible" itself has been eliminated, the only limit to what one can achieve is restricted by the limits of one’s imagination. But in order to stretch the imagination, one must first be allowed have ideas; to dream. What is more, Hill does not consider the birth of ideas to be solely a mental activity, as he connects them directly to the physical world by calling them "unborn opportunity," and relates them to the desire "to be:""
“One must realize that all who accumulated great fortunes, first did a certain amount of dreaming, hoping, wishing, desiring, and planning before they acquired money”
– Napoleon Hill
“We who desire to accumulate riches, should remember that the real leaders of the world always have been men who harnessed, and put into practical use, the intangible, unseen forces of unborn opportunity”
– Napoleon Hill
“In planning to acquire your share of the riches, let no one influence you to scorn the dreamer”
– Napoleon Hill
“Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds”
– Napoleon Hill
“If the thing you wish to do is right, and you believe in it, go ahead and do it! Put your dreams across, and never mind what ‘they’ say if you meet with temporary defeat, for ‘they,’ perhaps, do not know that every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success”
– Napoleon Hill
“A burning desire to be, and to do is the starting point from which all dreamers must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition”
– Napoleon Hill
Hill seems to have identified a point of no return; when a person simply has “had enough” and as a result of this insight is able to brake free from the shackles of the past and free the mind. Unless the shackles are still being used as an “alibi” – a handy excuse not to risk failure:
“Remember, too, that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start, and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they ‘arrive.’ The turning point in the lives of those who succeed, usually comes at the moment of some crisis, through which they are introduced to their ‘other selves’”
– Napoleon Hill
“Handicaps can be converted into stepping stones on which one may climb toward some worthy goal, unless they are accepted as obstacles, and used as alibis”
– Napoleon Hill
In order for the transformation of ideas into things to work, a certain amount of belief is required; a certain mindset that lets you know in your heart that you can, and will, achieve what you set out to do. Only then is one ready to “receive” the physical counterpart of the dream:
“There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it”
– Napoleon Hill
“I will cause others to believe in me, because I will believe in them, and in myself”
– Napoleon Hill
“When you begin to think and grow rich, you will observe that riches begin with a state of mind, with definiteness of purpose, with little or no hard work”
– Napoleon Hill
“A state of mind is something that one assumes. It cannot be purchased, it must be created”
– Napoleon Hill
When creating a mindset capable of accomplishing anything, keeping it clear of negativity is paramount; where negativity dwells, fear causes doubt, which will eventually murder all grand ideas as well as any chances of prosperity or happiness. An effective tool to keep fear at bay is to bathe in positive thoughts, as often as possible:
“It is essential for you to encourage positive emotions as dominant forces of your mind, and discourage – and eliminate negative emotions”
– Napoleon Hill
“Without doubt, the most common weakness of all human beings is the habit of leaving their minds open to the negative influence of other people”
– Napoleon Hill
“One becomes, finally, to believe whatever one repeats to one’s self, whether the statement be true or false. Every man is what he is because of the dominating thoughts which he permits to occupy his mind”
– Napoleon Hill
“Mind control is the result of self-discipline and habit. You either control your mind or it controls you. There is no half-way compromise”
– Napoleon Hill
Unfortunately, not all people want to see you succeed. Perhaps because they feel lesser in comparison, or perhaps because they just do not like you. However, even if they do want to see you succeed, achieving beyond what’s normal is frightening to most people – for many reasons. Therefore, the “help” of others may come in the shape of them trying to convince you to stop dreaming, to stop achieving and to stop aiming for the stars. They may even be “helping” you by focusing on the risk, and not the reward. They may very well be thinking that they are saving you from yourself, but in reality they are just giving in to their own fears. This is why Hill recommends caution when interacting with others, in order to let you grow your mind without interference:
“If you are influenced by the opinions of others, you will have no desire of you own”
– Napoleon Hill
“Too many people refuse to set high goals for themselves, or even neglect selecting a career, because they fear the criticism of relatives and ‘friends’ who may say ‘Don’t aim so high, people will think you are crazy’”
– Napoleon Hill
“Recognize that negative influences often work on you through your subconscious mind, therefore they are difficult to detect, and keep your mind closed against all people who depress or discourage you in any way”
– Napoleon Hill
“So subtle and deeply rooted is the emotion of fear that one may go through life burdened with it, never recognizing its presence”
– Napoleon Hill
“Criticism will plant fear in the human heart, or resentment, but it will not build love or affection”
– Napoleon Hill
“The number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family and neighbors”
– Napoleon Hill
The opposite of negative influence is positivity and enthusiasm, which Hill connects to “sex energy” – the libido. Perhaps that is why Hill draws the following conclusions:
“Enthusiasm is contagious, and the person who has it, under control, is generally welcome in any group of people”
– Napoleon Hill
“People who lack sex energy will never become enthusiastic nor inspire others with enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is one of the most important requisites in salesmanship, no matter what one is selling”
– Napoleon Hill
When you have cleared your mind of negative emotions, purged your surroundings of negative influence and found your libido, your new most precious commodity is your ideas. This, according to Hill, is the mental equivalent of the physical counterpart soon to manifested in your new physical world, should you be able to nurture your idea and put the necessary plans into action:
“The time to nurse an idea is at the time of its birth. Every minutes it lives gives it a better chance of surviving”
– Napoleon Hill
“There is no standard price on ideas. The creator of ideas makes his own price, and, if he is smart, gets it”
– Napoleon Hill
“What ever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”
– Napoleon Hill
However, perhaps the most interesting part of Napoleon Hill’s progressive views of the connection between the mind, our thoughts and reality is his views on the origin of ideas. According to Hill, the subconscious mind is the factory of genius, and when assigned to work for a definitive purpose (that is to say, the goals you have visualized and flooded with positive emotions), the subconscious has a remarkable capability of figuring out what you need to do in order to achieve what you visualized. All you have to do is to be attentive to what your subconscious is trying to tell you; heed to messages that often come in the form of hunches, flashes or intuition:
“The creative faculty of the mind is set into action entirely by emotions, and not by cold reason”
– Napoleon Hill
“Man attain the status of genius only when, and if, he stimulates his mind so that it draws upon the forces available, through the creative faculty of the imagination”
– Napoleon Hill
“The possibilities of creative effort connected with the subconscious mind are stupendous and imponderable. They inspire one with awe”
– Napoleon Hill
“The Sixth Sense is that portion of the subconscious mind which has been referred to as the Creative Imagination. It has also been referred to as the ‘receiving set’ through which ideas, plans and thoughts flash into the mind. The ‘flashes’ are sometimes called ‘hunches’ or ‘inspirations’”
– Napoleon Hill
“The Sixth Sense is a subject that will be of great interest and benefit to the person who aims to accumulate vast wealth, but it need not claim the attention of those whose desires are more modest”
– Napoleon Hill
“One sound idea is all that one needs to achieve success”
– Napoleon Hill