Napolean Hill was a bad ass, plain and simple. An American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal success literature, that’s right, self-help books.

In 1908, he was given an assignment, as part of a series of articles about famous men, to interview billionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who at the time was one of the most powerful men in the world. Hill discovered that Carnegie believed that the process of success could be elaborated in a simple formula that could be duplicated by the average person.

Impressed with Hill, Carnegie commissioned him without pay to interview successful people of that time in order to discover and publish this formula for success.

As part of his research, Hill interviewed many of the most famous and successful people of that time, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Bell, Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, Charles Schwab and Teddy Roosevelt.

Hill’s books have sold millions of copies and are still looked at today. His most famous work, “Think and Grow Rich” is one of the best-selling books of all time. It is a must have for anyone who wants to succeed in life whether it is in the field of finance or even the arts.

Some Great Quotes (my favorite ones) by The Great Napolean Hill. Taken from the book “Think and Grow Rich”:

Thoughts are just things.

We cannot leave these shores alive unless we win. We have no choice. We win or we perish.

We are the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls.

If you believe you are doomed to poverty or failure, because of some strange force over which you have no control, you are the creator of your own misfortune.

If you think you are beaten, you are. If you like to win, but think you can’t, it is almost certain you won’t. You’ve got to think high to rise.

Faith gives life, power and action to the impulse of thought.

Faith is the only known antidote for failure.

Every man is what he is because of the dominating thoughts which he permits to occupy his mind.

Arouse the sleeping genius.

Both success and failure are largely the results of habit.

Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of imagination.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

Ideas are products of the imagination.

Riches come, if they come at all, in response to definite demands, by the application of definite principles and not by chance or luck.

Knowledge is the only potential power. It becomes power only when and if, it is organized into definite plans of action and directed to a definite end.

Ideas have more power than the physical brains that give birth to them. They have the power to live on, after the brain that creates them has returned to dust.

Remember, when your plans fail, that temporary defeat is not permanent failure.

No man is ever whipped, until he quits, in his own mind.

We see men who have accumulated great fortunes but we often recognize only their triumph, overlooking the temporary defeats which they had to surmount before arriving.

A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.

Most became great leaders because they were intelligent followers.

Quality, plus quantity, plus proper spirit equals perfect salesmanship of service.

Procrastination, the opposite of decision, is a common enemy which practically every man must conquer.

Genuine wisdom is usually conspicuous through modesty and silence.

Keep a closed mouth and open ears and eyes.

Deeds and not words are what count most.

The great leaders of business, industry and finance and even the greatest artists, musicians, poets and writers became great because they developed the faculty of creative imagination.

Will power and desire, when properly combined make an irresistible pair.

Lack of persistence is one of the major causes of failure.

Men who succeed in an outstanding way, seldom do so before the age of 40.

History is not lacking in examples of men who attained to the status of genius as the result of the use of artificial mind stimulants in the form of alcohol and narcotics.

The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.

Fears are nothing more than states of mind. One’s state of mind is subject to control and direction.

People who do not succeed have one distinguishing trait in common. They know all the reasons for their failure and have what they believe to be an air tight alibi to explain away their own lack of achievement.

Life is a checker board and the player opposite you is time.