Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Napoleon Hill. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Napoleon Hill
Oliver Napoleon Hill (born October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) 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. Hill's works insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one's life. Most of his books were promoted as expounding principles to achieve "success".
Hill is, in modern times, a controversial figure. Accused of fraud, modern historians also doubt many of his claims, such as that he met Andrew Carnegie and that he was an attorney. Gizmodo has called him "the most famous conman you've probably never heard of".
Every adversity contains, at the same time, a seed of equivalent opportunity!
Longer Version:
Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit.
Opportunity -Often it comes in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.
If you are not learning while you're earning, you are cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation.
Tell the world what you intend to do, but first show it.
Longer Version:
Tell the world what you intend to do, but first show it. This is the equivalent of saying "deeds, and not words, are what count most
Set your mind on a definite goal and observe how quickly the world stands aside to let you pass.
You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.
If you can't do great things, do small things in a great way.
Longer Version:
If you can't do great things, do small things in a great way. Don't wait for great opportunities. Seize common, everyday ones and make them great.
No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy; unless you let him.
There are no limitations to the mind except those that we acknowledge.
When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.
The starting point of all achievement is desire.
Longer Version:
The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.
A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.
Longer Version:
If you give up before your goal has been reached, you are a "quitter." A QUITTER NEVER WINS AND A WINNER NEVER QUITS. Lift this sentence out, write it on a piece of paper in letters an inch high, and place it where you will see it every night before you go to sleep, and every morning before you go to work.
Time is a master worker that heals the wounds of temporary defeat, and equalizes the inequalities and rights the wrongs of the world.
If you don't want your life to be 'messed up,' don't fool around with those who have messed up theirs.
Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
Good intentions are useless until they are expressed in appropriate action!
Practice being grateful for everything that life has blessed you with.
The mastermind principle cannot obtain where perfect harmony does not prevail.
When you close the door of your mind to negative thoughts, the door of opportunity opens to you.
Your reputation is that which people think you are; your character is that which you are.
I learned that when one needs anything very badly, it is very difficult for him to find anyone who wishes to help him get it, but when one gets over the hump, achieves recognition, and no longer needs help, then just about everybody on earth wants to do something for him.
It takes more than a college degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated is one who has learned to get whatever he wants in life without violating the rights of others.
There is but one dependable method of accumulating and legally holding riches, and that is by rendering useful service.
Enthusiasm is contagious, and the person who has it, under control, is generally welcome in any group of people.
There is always room for those who can be relied upon to delivery the goods when they say they will.
Man's brain may be compared to an electric battery...a group of electric batteries will provide more energy than a single battery.
Enthusiasm, if fueled by inspiration and perseverance, travels with passion and its destination is excellence.
What remarkable strength is shown by the person who can lay aside personal prejudices and work without friction with a group of individuals with whom he or she is not in accord on many subjects.
The great leaders of business, industry and finance, and the great artists, poets, musicians and writers all became great because they developed the power of self-motivation .
Experience is an asset of which no worker can be cheated, no matter how selfish or greedy his immediate employer may be.
Hard labor and good intentions are not sufficient to carry a man through to success.
Imagine, as realistically as possible, the place where you want to be in the near future, the state you wish to reach and the Universe will help you and guide you.
Successful people move on their own initiative but they know where they are going before they start.
Ideas are intangible forces, but they 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.
People buy personalities as much as merchandise, and it is a question if they are not influenced more by the personalities with which they come in contact than they are by the merchandise.
No man has a chance to enjoy permanent success until he begins to look in a mirror for the real cause of all his mistakes.
Render more service than you are paid for and eventually you will be paid more for less services rendered.
Every man's own character is written so all who will may read it, in the expression of his eyes, the tone of his voice, the posture of his body, the style of his clothes, and the nature of his deeds!
Trying to get without first giving is as fruitless as trying to reap without having sown.
A resourceful person will always make opportunity fit his or her needs.
Nobody rises above mediocrity unless they use the brains of other people.
Self-sacrifice is essential to leadership. You will give, give all the time.
The battle is all over except the shouting when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.
If you can keep on trying after three failures in a given undertaking you may consider yourself a 'suspect' as a potential leader in your chosen occupation. If you can keep on trying after a dozen failures the seed of a genius is germinating within your soul.
The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.
The average person would have quit at the first failure. That's why there have been many average men and only one Edison.
Most people wish for riches, but few people provide the definite plan and burning desire which pave the road to wealth.
Truly, thoughts are things, and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches, or other material objects.
ALL THOUGHTS WHICH HAVE BEEN EMOTIONALIZED, (given feeling) AND MIXED WITH FAITH, begin immediately to translate themselves into their physical equivalent or counterpart.
Sex energy is the creative energy of all creative geniuses.
Longer Version:
Sex energy is the creative energy of all geniuses. There never has been, and never will be a great leader, builder or artist lacking in the driving force of sex.
The development of self-confidence starts with the elimination of this demon called fear.
Bravery is fearlessness-the absence of fear. The merest dolt may be brave because he lacks the mentality to appreciate his danger.
Find out what you really love to do, and then find a way to make a good living doing it.
People who do not succeed have one distinguishing trait in common. They know all the reasons for failure, and have what they believe to be air-tight alibis to explain away their own lack of achievement.
Fear, the worst of all enemies can be effectively cured by forced repetition of acts of courage.
Persistence is the direct result of habit. The mind absorbs and becomes a part of the daily experiences upon which it feeds. Fear, the worst of all enemies, can be effectively cured by forced repetition of acts of courage.
The person who sows a single beautiful thought in the mind of another, renders the world a greater service than that rendered by all the faultfinders combined.
Every well built house started in the form of a definite purpose plus a definite plan in the nature of a set of blueprints.
Every failure, every adversity, every heartache may be a blessing in disguise providing it softens the animal portion of our nature.
Every failure is a blessing in disguise, providing it teaches some needed lesson one could not have learned without it. Most so-called Failures are only temporary defeats.
You can't change where you started, but you can change the direction you are going. It's not what you are going to do, but it's what you are doing now that counts.
If you love, absolutely love what you are doing, chances are excellent that you will succeed. There is nothing so exhausting as working on a job you don't like.
Success is very largely a matter of adjusting one's self to the ever-varying and changing environments of life, in a spirit of harmony and poise.
A closed mind stumbles over the blessings of life without recognizing them.
If you truly desire money so keenly that your desire is an obsession, you will have no difficulty in convincing yourself that you will acquire it. The object is to want money, and to be so determined to have it that you convince yourself that you will have it.
Most failures could have been converted into successes if someone had held on another minute or made more effort.
Count that day lost whose descending sun finds you with no good deeds done.
The major weakness of all educational systems is that they neither teach nor encourage the habit of definite decision.
An educated person is not necessarily the one who has the knowledge, but the one who knows where to get it when needed.
The space you occupy and the authority you exercise may be measured with mathematical exactness by the service you render.
You have to understand you cannot have faith and fear at the same time; you can only have one or the other.
That man is rich indeed who has more friends than enemies, fears no one, and is so busy building that he has no time to devote to tearing down another's hopes and plans.
The surest way of finding peace of mind is that which helps the greatest number of others to find it.
You can be absolutely certain that when you feel you are being most unfairly tested, you are being prepared for great achievement.
Who said it could not be done? And tell me what great victories does he have to his credit which qualifies him to judge what can and can't be accomplished.
FAITH is the only agency through which the cosmic force of Infinite Intelligence can be harnessed and used by man.
When two or more people coordinate in a spirit of harmony, and work toward a definite objective, they place themselves in position, through that alliance, to absorb power directly from the great universal storehouse of Infinite Intelligence.
The Ability to influence people without irritating them is the most profitable art known to man.