Think and Grow Rich

"Tell the world what you intend to do, but first show it."

— Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937)

Introduction

Think and Grow Rich
Full title	Think and Grow Rich
Author	Napoleon Hill
Language	English
Subject	Success in business; Personal development; Wealth
Genre	Nonfiction; Self-help
Publisher	The Ralston Society
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover, paperback); e-book; audiobook
Goodreads rating	4.2/5  (as of 8 November 2025)
Website	penguin.co.uk

📘 Think and Grow Rich is a 1937 self-help book by American writer Napoleon Hill, published amid the Great Depression. The first edition was issued by the Ralston Society in Meriden, Connecticut. It distills Hill’s earlier “Law of Success” ideas into thirteen “steps to riches”—chapters on Desire, Faith, Autosuggestion, Specialized Knowledge, Imagination, Organized Planning, Decision, Persistence, the Master Mind, Sex Transmutation, the Subconscious Mind, the Brain, and the Sixth Sense. The register is motivational and prescriptive, organized as concise “step” chapters and built on devices such as visualisation and autosuggestion that readers are told to practice. According to the Library of Congress, the title had sold more than 20 million copies by Hill’s death in 1970 and at least another 50 million since. Decades later it remained commercially durable, appearing at No. 10 on BusinessWeek’s paperback business best-seller list on 4 June 2007 (its 24th month on the chart).

Chapter summary

This outline follows the Ralston Society first edition (1937).

🧭 1 – GENERAL INTRODUCTION. Edwin C. Barnes rides “blind baggage” to East Orange, New Jersey, determined to become Thomas A. Edison’s business associate, and walks into the laboratory to state his aim. Edison gives him a nominal job, and for months Barnes does minor work while keeping a single definite purpose in view. When Edison’s new office device—the Edison Dictating Machine (now the Ediphone)—fails to excite his salesmen, Barnes asks to sell it. He succeeds, secures a contract to market and distribute the machine nationally, and the partnership prospers for decades. The arrangement is even summarized by a slogan tying Edison’s manufacture to Barnes’s installation, signaling a durable alliance built on initiative and persistence. By contrast, R. U. Darby’s uncle abandons a western gold vein; a junk dealer’s engineer finds the ore just three feet beyond their last drill. Henry Ford likewise refuses to accept “impossible,” insisting his engineers cast a one‑piece V‑8 block until they figure it out. Across these vignettes, thought mixed with definiteness of purpose and persistence becomes tangible achievement. In this framework, success consciousness—a habit of seeing and acting from a clear aim—primes attention to recognize disguised opportunity and sustains effort through temporary defeat. Success comes to those who become SUCCESS CONSCIOUS.

🔥 2 – DESIRE (The First Step to Riches). Edwin C. Barnes climbs down from a freight train in Orange, N. J., looking like a tramp yet resolved to work with Edison, not for him. He accepts the most menial role and carries himself as a partner in mind from the first day. Five years pass without encouragement; he burns his bridges and stakes his future on the aim. The chapter contrasts such resolve with merchants who fled hardship and with Marshall Field, who built anyway, to show how a burning desire endures adversity. It then turns to procedure: fix an exact amount, decide what you will give, set a date, create and begin a plan at once, write a clear statement, and read it aloud morning and night while seeing and feeling yourself already in possession of the result. These steps, received from Andrew Carnegie and scrutinized by Thomas A. Edison, require imagination more than education and generalize to any definite goal. Desire operates as the ignition: a specific aim saturates attention and organizes effort around what matters most. Repetition with emotion conditions the subconscious to surface plans and persistence until circumstances match the inner picture. He had to win or perish!

🙏 3 – FAITH (The Second Step to Riches). In a midwestern city, bank official Joseph Grant “borrows” a large sum, loses it gambling, and, when a Bank Examiner begins checking accounts, retreats to a local hotel; three days later he is found despairing and soon dies, a case doctors call mental suicide. The episode illustrates how the subconscious, which never distinguishes between constructive and destructive suggestions, translates repeated, emotionalized thoughts into their physical equivalents. Faith is presented as the head chemist of the mind, blending thought vibrations and transmitting them to Infinite Intelligence. Because faith can be induced, the method is autosuggestion: repeated instructions, saturated with feeling, until belief takes hold and the mind behaves as though attainment were inevitable. A five‑part Self‑Confidence Formula operationalizes this practice—spend thirty minutes daily thinking of the person you intend to become, devote ten minutes to demanding self‑confidence, write a Definite Chief Aim, and sign and recite the pledge aloud once a day—while warning that the same law will destroy if fed fear and doubt. In the system of the book, faith energizes desire, giving plans vitality and momentum and supplying the conviction to act before evidence appears. Practically, this means conducting oneself as already in possession of the goal and flooding the subconscious with that expectation until it yields plans and courage. FAITH is the starting point of all accumulation of riches!

🗣️ 4 – AUTO-SUGGESTION (The Third Step to Riches). In a quiet room—preferably in bed at night—the instructions are concrete: close your eyes and repeat aloud, so you can hear your own voice, the written statement naming the exact sum you intend to acquire, the deadline for acquiring it, and the service you will render in exchange; as you speak, see and feel yourself already in possession of the money. An explicit example follows—$50,000 by the first of January five years hence, earned as a salesman—complete with the pledge to render the fullest quantity and quality of service and to await the plan that will arrive. The same statement is to be read morning and night, posted where it is visible until memorized, because repetition with feeling imprints instructions on the subconscious. Hill warns that plain words do nothing; he cites Émile Coué’s famous formula to show that without emotion and belief, suggestions lack force. The chapter explains that the conscious mind is an outer guard that can choose which impressions to pass to the subconscious, and that most people fail by letting weeds grow in that “garden” through neglect. The price of influence is persistence: concentrate daily on the definite amount, hold the picture until it becomes a burning obsession, and follow the steps from Desire and the coming Master Mind instructions. This is a practical ritual, not mysticism—habitually emotionalized suggestion builds a “money consciousness” that shapes attention, energy, and choice toward congruent actions. In the book’s system, auto‑suggestion is the transmission belt that converts stated aims into expectation and expectation into sustained effort. Your subconscious mind recognizes and acts upon ONLY thoughts which have been well-mixed with emotion or feeling.

🎓 5 – SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE (The Fourth Step to Riches). During the World War era, a Chicago newspaper labeled Henry Ford “an ignorant pacifist,” prompting his libel suit; on the stand he parried trivia—“How many British soldiers came in 1776?”—by saying he could press an electric push‑button on his desk to summon any expert he required. The courtroom grasped his point: organized access to know‑how, not encyclopedic recall, drives achievement, and Ford’s Master Mind supplied the technical knowledge he chose not to carry in his own head. The chapter contrasts university faculties rich in general knowledge with their modest personal fortunes, arguing that knowledge acquires power only when organized into definite plans aimed at a specific end. It points to Andrew Carnegie relying on associates for metallurgy and markets, to Thomas A. Edison’s scant formal schooling, and to Columbia University placement chief Robert P. Moore’s emphasis on specialists and campus leaders over “straight‑A” records. Night schools and correspondence courses appear as practical sources, prized not only for content but for the discipline of prompt payment, deadlines, and finishing what one begins. A detailed case describes a mother assembling nearly fifty typed pages—a plan book narrating her son’s abilities, schooling, and the exact plan he would use on the job—to sell his services into a better position. The thread through these examples is precise: identify the knowledge your definite chief aim requires, then acquire or contract it and weld it into plans. In this framework, specialized knowledge is an instrument; the mechanism is organization and alliance—directed learning plus a Master Mind—to convert intent into marketable results. Knowledge is only potential power.

💡 6 – IMAGINATION (The Fifth Step to Riches). The named vignette is “The Enchanted Kettle”: an old country doctor slips through a drug store’s back door, sets down a large kettle and a wooden paddle, and for $500 hands a young clerk a slip bearing a secret formula that will, over time, pour wealth across the South. From that image of a back‑room bargain, the text defines imagination as the workshop of the mind where desire takes shape, noting that the age of rapid change furnishes constant stimuli and that in roughly fifty years mankind has harnessed air travel, radio, and high‑speed locomotion. Two faculties are distinguished: synthetic imagination, which recombines existing ideas, and creative imagination, which receives hunches and inspirations when desire excites the mind. The practical charge is to write plans and put imagination to work immediately, because reducing an aim to paper is the first concrete step that begins converting thought into its physical counterpart. Hill argues that ideas, not hard labor alone, produce large fortunes, illustrating with a publisher who sold over a million extra copies by changing only a book’s title and with predictions about radio rewarding those who design programs that turn listeners into buyers. He adds that persistence keeps an idea alive long enough for it to grow strong enough to drive its author, as happened in his own twenty‑five‑year project launched by Andrew Carnegie’s suggestion. Imagination, then, is the shaping force: it translates a vague impulse into executable plans and opportunities that markets can recognize. Mechanically, it recombines knowledge and experience until a plan with leverage emerges, enabling desire to crystallize into money. Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

📋 7 – ORGANIZED PLANNING (The Sixth Step to Riches). In a small conference room, a Master Mind alliance meets at least twice a week; members agree in advance on compensation and keep perfect harmony while they build a definite, practical plan to turn a money desire into action. The group checks and approves every step, and when a plan fails it is replaced—again and again—until one works, with each setback treated as temporary defeat rather than final failure. Examples underline the rule: Thomas A. Edison met ten thousand “temporary defeats” before perfecting the incandescent lamp; Henry Ford and James J. Hill rebuilt plans after reverses; Samuel Insull lost more than one hundred million dollars when new plans proved unsound. Planning extends to selling personal services: prepare a bound brief—“BRIEF OF THE QUALIFICATIONS OF Robert K. Smith”—specify the exact position, offer to work on probation, and present education, experience, and employer research with courtroom-level neatness. Sound plans are joint creations; no one mind has enough experience and imagination to ensure a great fortune without others’ counsel. Across pages of leadership traits, causes of failure, and self‑analysis questions, the message is consistent: originate a plan, have it checked by your alliance, and keep rebuilding until the plan earns results. Organized planning is the hinge between imagination and outcomes, channeling desire into coordinated, testable steps supported by other minds. The mechanism is social and iterative: shared standards, explicit roles, and rapid plan replacement turn scattered effort into a strategy that survives defeat. A QUITTER NEVER WINS--AND--A WINNER NEVER QUITS.

✅ 8 – DECISION (The Seventh Step to Riches). A large study of more than 25,000 failure cases and several hundred millionaires shows a stark pattern: lack of decision ranks near the top of thirty major causes of failure, while the wealthy reach decisions quickly and change them slowly, if at all. Henry Ford exemplifies definiteness, continuing the Model “T” against advice until it produced a fortune, and changing only when necessary. Keep your own counsel; confide plans only to a sympathetic Master Mind, gather facts quietly, listen more than you talk, and let deeds precede words. Because opinions are the cheapest commodity, broadcasting intentions invites interference and envy; a closed mouth with open eyes and ears protects momentum. Definiteness requires courage; the fifty‑six signers of the Declaration of Independence are cited as men who staked their lives on a single choice. Decision turns a wish into commitment, clearing uncertainty so action can proceed without constant second‑guessing. By training a bias for prompt, definite choices and resisting the pull of other people’s opinions, the mind aligns behavior with a chosen aim and keeps it there long enough to compound results. PROCRASTINATION, the opposite of DECISION, is a common enemy which practically every man must conquer.

⏳ 9 – PERSISTENCE (The Eighth Step to Riches). The first test of persistence arrives when the reader tries to follow the six steps from Desire: hold a definite goal, a definite plan, and the daily routine without slipping back into habit—something only “two out of every hundred” do without prodding. Lack of persistence is a common weakness that yields to a stronger desire; repeated application of the rules must become habit, because spasmodic effort produces nothing. The text contrasts poverty consciousness, which grows by neglect, with money consciousness, which must be created to order through sustained effort. Concrete recoveries during the Depression illustrate the point: W. C. Fields, past sixty and broke, offered to work without pay in films and clawed back; Marie Dressler staged a late‑life return; Eddie Cantor rebuilt from the 1929 crash to an income of $10,000 a week. Practical aids include surrounding oneself with a Master Mind, using auto‑suggestion, and feeding the subconscious a clear picture of the aim until it drives action day and night. Persistence binds the thirteen steps into a single force, keeping attention on the aim long enough for plans to mature and opportunities to be recognized. The mechanism is will fused to desire: steady pressure that converts setbacks into signals to adjust the plan rather than abandon the goal. There may be no heroic connotation to the word "persistence," but the quality is to the character of man what carbon is to steel.

🤝 10 – POWER OF THE MASTER MIND (The Ninth Step to Riches). Andrew Carnegie surrounds himself with approximately fifty men for the definite purpose of manufacturing and marketing steel and credits the fortune that follows to the power created by that alliance. Power is defined as organized, intelligently directed knowledge, drawn from three practical sources—Infinite Intelligence accessed by creative imagination, accumulated experience preserved in libraries and schools, and ongoing experiment and research—and then expressed through action. A Master Mind is the coordination of knowledge and effort in harmony toward a definite aim, and the chapter distinguishes its economic advantages from a “psychic” effect that increases the thought‑energy available to each participant. Like grouped batteries delivering more current than a single cell, a cluster of minds in harmony yields surplus power that no individual can generate alone. Henry Ford’s accelerated rise after befriending Thomas A. Edison and allying with Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs, and Luther Burbank illustrates how association multiplies capacity within a decade and, over twenty‑five years, produces one of America’s great fortunes. At national scale, Mahatma Gandhi induces more than two hundred million people to coordinate in harmony around a definite purpose, an example of passive power created by alignment rather than force. Plans require this surplus power to move; careful selection, perfect harmony, and steady cooperation turn ideas into leverage. In the book’s system, the Master Mind is how desire becomes force; the mechanism is synergistic attention and knowledge‑sharing that compound into authority and momentum. No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.

💞 11 – THE MYSTERY OF SEX TRANSMUTATION (The Tenth Step to Riches). Under a section on why men seldom succeed before forty, an analysis of more than 25,000 people over twelve years finds that outstanding success typically comes after forty or fifty because earlier energy is dissipated in physical expression rather than directed to creative work. Transmutation means switching the mind from physical expression to other channels, and sex is named the most powerful human desire because, when harnessed, it preserves courage, will‑power, persistence, and creative ability for constructive ends. The chapter lists ten mind stimuli that can “key up” thought—placing sex desire first and including love, money ambition, music, friendship, a Master Mind alliance, mutual suffering, autosuggestion, fear, and narcotics or alcohol—and urges disciplined use of the constructive set. The practical instruction is to redirect the charge into concrete projects—writing, enterprise, leadership—so the same energy that tempts dissipation instead fuels useful plans. A businessman credits the sustained presence of an inspiring secretary over more than twelve years with lifting his imagination to a higher rate of vibration, presented as a controlled instance of the principle. The argument is not mystical: the emotion is neutral; what matters is deliberate redirection and repetition until a new association becomes habit. In the book’s framework, sex transmutation supplies high‑octane fuel to the whole method; the mechanism is emotional alchemy—reframing and rehearsing desire until it powers creation instead of consumption. Sex energy is the creative energy of all genii.

🧠 12 – THE SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND (The Eleventh Step to Riches). Every thought reaching the objective mind through the senses is classified and recorded in the subconscious, which then acts first on dominating desires that are mixed with emotion such as faith. Described as a connecting link, it works continuously and draws on Infinite Intelligence to translate desires into their physical equivalents by the most practical routes available. Because it responds more readily to feeling than to “cold reason,” the chapter instructs approaching this “inner audience” with emotionalized instructions delivered through autosuggestion. It names seven major positive emotions—desire, faith, love, sex, enthusiasm, romance, hope—and seven negative emotions—fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed, superstition, anger—and notes that positives must be injected deliberately while negatives enter uninvited. As a cautionary example, prayers made in fear and doubt fail because the subconscious transmits the feeling, not the request. The earlier tools—written chief aim, morning‑and‑night repetition, and harmony with a Master Mind—are presented as the daily inputs that saturate attention and keep behavior aligned with a definite purpose. Within the book’s system, the subconscious mind is the conduit that receives plans and enlists larger forces; the mechanism is repeated, emotional suggestion that displaces negatives and turns desire into sustained action. You may VOLUNTARILY plant in your subconscious mind any plan, thought, or purpose which you desire to translate into its physical or monetary equivalent.

📡 13 – THE BRAIN (The Twelfth Step to Riches). Working with Alexander Graham Bell and Elmer R. Gates more than twenty years earlier, observation gives rise to a claim: every human brain functions as both a broadcasting and a receiving station for thought vibrations moving through the ether. Emotion “steps up” these vibrations; the subconscious mind acts as the sending station and the Creative Imagination as the receiving set, so that feelings fuse with thoughts before the subconscious will act on them. The narrative then turns to science: University of Chicago neuroanatomist C. Judson Herrick estimates 10–14 billion cortical nerve cells arranged in definite patterns and describes micro‑electrodes that register potentials to a millionth of a volt, underscoring the brain’s vast circuitry. A New York Times editorial summarizing J. B. Rhine’s Duke University experiments reports more than a hundred thousand tests of telepathy and clairvoyance, with results said to be beyond “one chance in many a million million,” unaffected by distance of several hundred miles and boosted by stimulants while depressed by narcotics. As a practical method, a three‑person round‑table blends minds in harmony to stimulate ideas “from unknown sources,” a simple use of the Master Mind to solve client problems. The chapter’s thrust is operational rather than mystical: three principles—subconscious mind, creative imagination, and auto‑suggestion—constitute a mental radio that can be tuned to send and receive plans. The core idea is that the brain converts desire into power when emotion raises the intensity of thought high enough to be broadcast to, and to receive from, other minds. Mechanistically, auto‑suggestion and harmonious discussion create a feedback loop that amplifies attention until practical solutions present themselves. The Creative Imagination is the 'receiving set,' through which the vibrations of thought are picked up from the ether.

🕯️ 14 – THE SIXTH SENSE (The Thirteenth Step to Riches). Night after night, for years, an imaginary “Invisible Counselors” cabinet convenes around a mental Council Table: Emerson, Paine, Edison, Darwin, Lincoln, Burbank, Napoleon, Ford, and Carnegie are addressed aloud, each asked to impress specific qualities on the subconscious. The practice grows from hero‑worship into deliberate character‑building through self‑suggestion, with the admission that the meetings are fictional yet productive of “inspiration” during emergencies and complex decisions. The sixth sense is framed as the apex of the philosophy, the door to the “Temple of Wisdom,” and a probable medium of contact between the finite mind and Infinite Intelligence. It is not acquired casually; mastery of the other twelve principles and years of meditation and self‑examination are said to precede reliable use. The text claims the function is practical—warnings of danger and timely notice of opportunity—while emphasizing that leaders from Edison to Ford exemplify its application in invention and enterprise. The guiding image is a mental antenna that works best when the mind is emotionally keyed up and harmonized by prior discipline. The core idea is that a cultivated intuition completes the system by converting disciplined desire into timely guidance. Mechanistically, sustained auto‑suggestion, emotional readiness, and a clear chief aim prime the “receiving set” so that hunches arrive as workable plans. Through the aid of the sixth sense, you will be warned of impending dangers in time to avoid them, and notified of opportunities in time to embrace them.

👻 15 – HOW TO OUTWIT THE SIX GHOSTS OF FEAR (Clearing the Brain for Riches). A closing self‑audit begins with three enemies that must be cleared out—Indecision, Doubt, and Fear—because the sixth sense will not function while they remain. Six basic fears are named and examined in order of prevalence: poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age, and death; their cycles are illustrated by the Depression’s long season of fear of poverty and the war’s fear of death. The text insists that fear is a state of mind, that thought impulses quickly clothe themselves in physical equivalents, and that mass fixation on poverty after the 1929 crash crystallized into a national depression. Practical work follows: detailed symptoms expose the fear of poverty, and a long self‑analysis questionnaire—“at least one day is necessary” to answer—forces a personal inventory of habits, associates, and uses of time. The remedy is mental hygiene: close the mind against “tramp” thought impulses, use auto‑suggestion to keep it positive, and choose associates who reinforce courage rather than worry. The reader is challenged to make an unmistakable choice between the roads to poverty and to riches and to protect the “spiritual estate” of the mind with will‑power. The core idea is that mastery of fear is prerequisite to converting desire into results, because unguarded thought multiplies the very conditions it dreads. Mechanistically, deliberate thought selection, repeated suggestion, and environment control displace fearful imagery and align behavior with a definite chief aim. You have ABSOLUTE CONTROL over but one thing, and that is your thoughts.

Background & reception

🖋️ Author & writing. Hill was a U.S. self-help author whose earlier works included The Law of Success, and he spent decades writing and lecturing about “principles of success.” Publisher materials present Think and Grow Rich as the outcome of more than 25 years of research and interviews with over 500 prosperous individuals. Hill’s origin story credits Andrew Carnegie with urging him to codify a success philosophy after an early meeting. That anecdote is disputed: an EBSCO reference article, citing Carnegie’s biographer, reports that no evidence exists that Hill ever met Carnegie. The book’s structure is fixed around thirteen named “steps to riches,” from Desire and Faith through the “Master Mind” to a final “Sixth Sense” chapter. Later classroom-oriented printings retained the chapter architecture while adding contemporary vignettes, including a 2005 Tarcher/Penguin revision edited by Arthur R. Pell.

📈 Commercial reception. The Library of Congress notes that Think and Grow Rich had sold more than 20 million copies by 1970 and at least another 50 million since. Its long-tail sales persisted into the 21st century; on 4 June 2007 it ranked No. 10 on BusinessWeek’s paperback business list and was marking its 24th month on the chart.

👍 Praise. The Financial Times wrote that the book “made [Hill] famous,” distilled his thinking, and—published in 1937—“sold in the tens of millions,” offering Depression-era optimism that still finds readers. Business Insider highlighted the title’s actionable maxims about wealth, power, and overcoming mental barriers. Encyclopaedia Britannica situates the book among 20th-century self-help titles that popularized positive-thinking prosperity ideas and “sold millions.”

👎 Criticism. Writing in The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman argued that Hill offered no evidence that his celebrated interviewees were happy and that the book’s “single Secret of Success” thesis is unconvincing compared with multifactor explanations of achievement. EBSCO’s overview further records historians’ view that Hill’s claimed meeting with Carnegie lacks documentary support. A longform investigation at Gizmodo criticized Hill’s record, alleging fabrications and fraudulent ventures that complicate readings of his success narrative.

🌍 Impact & adoption. In sport, a Guardian profile of world snooker champion Peter Ebdon details how he used Think and Grow Rich techniques—visualising outcomes under pressure—during pivotal matches. In higher education and workforce contexts, UVA Wise reported in 2024 on a partnership with the Napoleon Hill Foundation and a long-running “Keys to Success” class drawing on Hill’s principles. The Foundation also promotes structured learning based on Hill’s material through its own programs.

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