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Think and Grow Rich

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"Do not wait. The time will never be \"just right.\" Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along."

— Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937)

Introduction

Think and Grow Rich
 
Full titleThink and Grow Rich
AuthorNapoleon Hill
LanguageEnglish
SubjectSuccess in business; Personal development; Wealth
GenreNonfiction; Self-help
PublisherThe Ralston Society
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover, paperback); e-book; audiobook
Goodreads rating4.2/5  (as of 8 November 2025)
Websitepenguin.co.uk

📘 Think and Grow Rich is a 1937 self-help book by American writer Napoleon Hill, published amid the Great Depression. [1] The first edition was issued by the Ralston Society in Meriden, Connecticut. [2] 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. [3] 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. [4] 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. [1] 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). [5]

Chapter summary

This outline follows the Ralston Society first edition (1937).[2][1]

🧭 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).

🎓 5 – SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE (The Fourth Step to Riches).

💡 6 – IMAGINATION (The Fifth Step to Riches).

📋 7 – ORGANIZED PLANNING (The Sixth Step to Riches).

✅ 8 – DECISION (The Seventh Step to Riches).

⏳ 9 – PERSISTENCE (The Eighth Step to Riches).

🤝 10 – POWER OF THE MASTER MIND (The Ninth Step to Riches).

💞 11 – THE MYSTERY OF SEX TRANSMUTATION (The Tenth Step to Riches).

🧠 12 – THE SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND (The Eleventh Step to Riches).

📡 13 – THE BRAIN (The Twelfth Step to Riches).

🕯️ 14 – THE SIXTH SENSE (The Thirteenth Step to Riches).

👻 15 – HOW TO OUTWIT THE SIX GHOSTS OF FEAR (Clearing the Brain for Riches).

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.” [6] Publisher materials present Think and Grow Rich as the outcome of more than 25 years of research and interviews with over 500 prosperous individuals. [4] Hill’s origin story credits Andrew Carnegie with urging him to codify a success philosophy after an early meeting. [7] That anecdote is disputed: an EBSCO reference article, citing Carnegie’s biographer, reports that no evidence exists that Hill ever met Carnegie. [8] 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. [3] Later classroom-oriented printings retained the chapter architecture while adding contemporary vignettes, including a 2005 Tarcher/Penguin revision edited by Arthur R. Pell. [9]

📈 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. [1] 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. [5]

👍 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. [10] Business Insider highlighted the title’s actionable maxims about wealth, power, and overcoming mental barriers. [11] Encyclopaedia Britannica situates the book among 20th-century self-help titles that popularized positive-thinking prosperity ideas and “sold millions.” [12]

👎 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. [13] EBSCO’s overview further records historians’ view that Hill’s claimed meeting with Carnegie lacks documentary support. [8] A longform investigation at Gizmodo criticized Hill’s record, alleging fabrications and fraudulent ventures that complicate readings of his success narrative. [14]

🌍 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. [15] 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. [16] The Foundation also promotes structured learning based on Hill’s material through its own programs. [17]

Related content & more

YouTube videos

Load video
YouTube
Animated summary – key ideas (10 min)
Load video
YouTube
Napoleon Hill lecture: “Your Right to Be Rich” (1954) (39 min)

CapSach articles

 

Digital Minimalism

 

Four Thousand Weeks

 

The One Thing

 

Make Your Bed

 

The Magic of Thinking Big

 

The Compound Effect

 

CS/Self-improvement book summaries


References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937)". Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Think and grow rich : original 1937 classic edition". WorldCat. OCLC. Retrieved 8 November 2025.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Think and Grow Rich". Colorado Mountain College Library Catalog. Colorado Mountain College. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Think And Grow Rich". Penguin Books UK. Penguin Books. 8 August 2019. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "The BusinessWeek Best-Seller List". Bill George. Bill George. 4 June 2007. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  6. ↑ "Napoleon Hill". Macmillan. Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  7. ↑ "Fresh Prince". The New Yorker. 30 October 2006. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Napoleon Hill". EBSCO Research Starters. EBSCO Information Services. 2023. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  9. ↑ "Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller—Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century". Internet Archive. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. 2005. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  10. ↑ "Book review: Truthful Living: The First Writings of Napoleon Hill". Financial Times. 29 November 2018. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  11. ↑ Woodruff, Mandi (14 September 2013). "15 Insights From The Man Who Taught The World To 'Think And Grow Rich'". Business Insider. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  12. ↑ "Prosperity gospel". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 28 October 2025. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  13. ↑ Burkeman, Oliver (15 August 2009). "How to feel up in a downturn". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  14. ↑ Novak, Matt (6 December 2016). "The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the Greatest Self-Help Scammer of All Time". Gizmodo. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  15. ↑ Rendall, Jonathan (6 April 2003). "A breed apart". The Observer. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  16. ↑ "Japanese Business Development Training CEO Visits UVA Wise, Signs Agreement with Napoleon Hill Foundation". UVA Wise News. University of Virginia’s College at Wise. 9 August 2024. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  17. ↑ "Success Survey". Napoleon Hill Foundation. Napoleon Hill Foundation. 19 August 2015. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
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