Modern systems: the author

Napoleon Hill:
the record, the book, the method

Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) was an American self-help author whose Think and Grow Rich (1937) promised riches through desire, faith and autosuggestion, a method he credited to Andrew Carnegie. No document outside his own books shows that he met Carnegie. Below: the record, what research keeps and a five-minute practice.

Who was Napoleon Hill?

Napoleon Hill was a Virginia-born writer and promoter who ran short-lived schools and magazines, wrote a 1937 bestseller and taught his “science of success” until his death in 1970.

His early life is known mostly from his own books and an authorized biography (1995); newspapers give a rougher outline (Matt Novak, Gizmodo, 2016):

Did Napoleon Hill really meet Andrew Carnegie?

No independent evidence shows that he did: the 1908 meeting with the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) is known only from Hill’s own books. Carnegie’s biographer David Nasaw told Novak he “found no evidence of any sort that Carnegie and Hill ever met”.

Hill’s two printed versions differ:

• 1928. The Law of Success is dedicated to Carnegie, “who suggested the writing of the course”. The introductory lesson says Hill interviewed him “nearly twenty years ago” for a story, and Carnegie credited a “master mind” of his managers. Over forty other names are thanked “either in person or by studying the life-work”; the next lines claim he studied most of them “at close range, in person”, again with no outside record.
• 1937. Think and Grow Rich is sold on its title page as “the famous Andrew Carnegie formula for money-making”. Its preface says Carnegie “carelessly tossed” a secret into his mind “when I was but a boy”; in 1908 Hill was 24 or 25. The secret is never named.

The Foundation’s timeline still gives 1908 as the year Carnegie “induces” Hill to build his philosophy (archived 2025). A missing record is not proof that it never happened; it means one interested witness. How to weigh such claims: ask for the date.

Was Napoleon Hill a fraud? What the record of his lifetime shows

Newspapers of his time report repeated fraud accusations against Hill from 1908 to 1923, gathered by the journalist Matt Novak in 2016; we have not seen the clippings, so each item is his reading.

• 1907-1908, Alabama. His lumber firm bought $10,000 to $20,000 of lumber on credit and resold it for cash; he left Mobile in September 1908 with creditors asking for him.
• 1912. Motor World called his Automobile College of Washington a get-rich-quick scheme; its students had built cars, unpaid, for a carmaker that failed.
• 1918, Chicago. Arrest warrants under the Illinois securities law: shares in his institute were offered on a $100,000 capital, while its assets were worth about $1,200, the state said.
• 1919. The Federal Trade Commission charged him over oil-stock advertising in Hill’s Golden Rule.
• 1923, Ohio. Donations for a prison school that, the warden said, never arrived.

Other claims have no record outside Hill’s writings: that he advised Woodrow Wilson in 1918 and Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1936, says the Foundation), or practised law. Even his end is disputed: the Foundation says he “did not die penniless”; Novak, that he is believed to have had very little money. We give the dates and leave the label to you.

What is Think and Grow Rich about, and what is Outwitting the Devil?

Think and Grow Rich (1937) condenses Hill’s 1928 course into thirteen “steps to riches”, led by desire, faith and autosuggestion; Outwitting the Devil is an imagined interview with the Devil, first printed in 2011.

The thirteen steps run from desire to the sixth sense (list in the FAQ). Chapter 2 turns desire into six instructions: fix the exact sum, decide what you will give for it, set a date, plan and start at once, write it down, and read it aloud morning and night as you “see and feel and believe” the money is already yours (text, 1938 printing, pp. 42-43). Chapter 14 adds nightly imaginary meetings with nine “Invisible Counselors”, from Emerson to Carnegie.

Outwitting the Devil stayed unpublished, a 2011 review says, because Hill’s wife feared a reaction from organized religion (Publishers Weekly); its 1938 date has no independent check.

Is Napoleon Hill New Thought, or Hermetic?

Hill belongs to American New Thought, not to Hermetism: his 1928 course says its key method, concentration on one aim, is used by “the followers of New Thought”, and neither main book names Hermes.

The vocabulary is New Thought’s. The Law of Success uses “Law of Attraction” a dozen times, with “like attracts like”, and describes thoughts as vibrations carried through the ether, like radio (the phrase’s longer history: the law of attraction). Think and Grow Rich drops the phrase: in the 1938 text we searched it does not occur once. It keeps “thoughts are things”, quoted from a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox and the running page heading of Prentice Mulford’s essays Your Forces (1887-1888).

On our Modern systems line he stands after William Walker Atkinson (1906) and the Kybalion (1908), which borrowed the Hermetic name, and before Joseph Murphy (1963), who built a method on the subconscious mind, Hill’s eleventh step. The Greek Hermetica (about 100-300 CE) ask the older question, how far a mind shapes a life, but about nous and knowing God, not money: a source of the question, not proof of an answer.

Does Think and Grow Rich work? Hill’s steps against the research

Parts of it hold up: specific goals, deadlines and concrete plans have strong research behind them, while picturing the money as already yours and wanting it obsessively point the other way. No study has tested the book itself.

• Goals (Locke and Latham, 2002). Over 100 tasks, more than 40,000 people: specific, difficult goals raised performance (for difficulty, d = .52 to .82); on complex new tasks with a wrong strategy, a hard target did worse. Near-miss goals bred cheating in a lab test (2004), narrow focus and risk in a review (2009).
• Fantasy and self-talk (2002; 2009; 2011). Four studies: expecting success predicted effort, enjoying images of it less (correlational). “I’m a lovable person” made people low in self-esteem feel worse. Across 32 sports studies, self-talk helped (effect .48), motivational cues too; instructional ones did better only on fine, precise tasks.
• Passion (Vallerand and colleagues, 2010). In 355 nurses in France and Quebec, obsessive passion predicted more conflict between work and the rest of life, and conflict predicted burnout.

The defensible core is plain: what you want, by when, what you give and how you start. Money consciousness, the ether and the sixth sense are claims, not findings.

How do you turn Hill’s “definite chief aim” into a plan in five minutes?

Keep Hill’s definite aim, date and plan; swap the money already yours for the steps research supports: best outcome, obstacle, if-then plan.

1. An aim you control (1 minute). Turn the exact sum into an action and a date: not “earn $10,000” but “send five proposals by 30 November”. The sum is not yours to command; the action is.
2. What you give (1 minute). Keep Hill’s second step: the hours, skill or service you will put in.
3. Best outcome, then the obstacle in you (1 minute). Picture for a few seconds the best result of reaching the aim, then the habit or fear most likely to stop you.
4. If-then (1 minute). “If [the obstacle shows up], then I [small action].”
5. Read once, then start (1 minute). Not aloud twice a day: put the first step in your calendar within 24 hours, plus one check date.

Example.
Hill’s version: $10,000 by 1 March, seen as already mine.
Aim: send five client proposals by 30 November.
I give: two mornings a week, 8:00 to 10:00.
Best outcome: two new clients by January.
Obstacle: I polish the first draft for days.
If-then: if a draft passes one hour, I send it as it is.

Why it should help. Steps 3 and 4 are mental contrasting with implementation intentions: across 21 studies with 15,907 people, g = 0.34 (about 0.24 after a bias correction), less from a sheet alone (0.28; Wang, Wang and Gai, 2021). The order is ours, not a tested package. An AI assistant can draft steps 1, 2 and 5; step 3 must be yours.

Where it stops. If a missed target tempts you to fudge numbers, cut the target, not the truth (2004). If it costs you sleep for weeks or crowds out the rest of life, the obsessive pattern (2010), scale it back.

What does this not promise?

Neither Hill’s thirteen steps nor the sheet above promise money, health or success; at most they give a clearer aim, a first step you actually take and a date to check it.

• Not wealth. No study links reading a money statement, or this book, to higher income. Never borrow or invest on the strength of a feeling.
• Not a test of faith. If the money does not come, you did not “fail to believe”; markets, other people and luck decide much of it.
• Not a treatment. If money worries keep you awake for weeks or your mood stays low, talk to a doctor or a debt adviser.
• Not a verdict on readers. Many found the book a push to start; we date its claims rather than mock them.

How much of a life is your own doing: our answer for today is human agency in the AI age.

Key facts

Born	26 October 1883, Wise County, Virginia
Died	8 November 1970, Greenville, South Carolina
Main books	The Law of Success, 1928; Think and Grow Rich, 1937; Outwitting the Devil, 2011
Carnegie meeting	Claimed for 1908; no independent record
Legal trouble	Warrants 1918, FTC charge 1919 (Novak, 2016)
Research	Goals and plans: supported; picturing the money: not
Checked	13 November 2026

Fair questions

Did Napoleon Hill really meet Andrew Carnegie?

No independent evidence shows it. The 1908 meeting is known only from Hill’s own books, which tell it differently in 1928 and 1937, and Carnegie’s biographer David Nasaw found no trace of it (Gizmodo, 2016).

Was Napoleon Hill a fraud?

Newspapers of his time, gathered by Matt Novak in 2016, report unpaid lumber debts (1908), arrest warrants under Illinois securities law (1918) and a Federal Trade Commission charge (1919). His claims to have advised Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt have no record outside his own writings.

What are the 13 steps in Think and Grow Rich?

Desire, faith, autosuggestion, specialized knowledge, imagination, organized planning, decision, persistence, the master mind, sex transmutation, the subconscious mind, the brain and the sixth sense.

When was Outwitting the Devil written?

Its annotator Sharon Lechter calls it a 73-year-old manuscript (Publishers Weekly review, 2011), so about 1938, after Think and Grow Rich; Sterling first published it in 2011. No independent record confirms the date.

Does Think and Grow Rich actually work?

Partly. Specific goals and if-then plans have strong research support, but enjoying images of a wished-for future predicted less effort in a 2002 study, and no study links the book itself to wealth.

Sources & further reading

• N. Hill, The Law of Success (Ralston University Press, 1928), LoC, scan.
• N. Hill, Think and Grow Rich (Ralston Society, 1937), LoC; 1938 printing, transcription; public domain in the US per HathiTrust.
• N. Hill, Outwitting the Devil (Sterling, 2011), LoC; Publishers Weekly review, 2011.
• M. Novak, Gizmodo, 6 December 2016: legal record, Nasaw; its newspapers not seen by us.
• Napoleon Hill Foundation, timeline, “Rich or Penniless?” (archived).
• Wikipedia, Napoleon Hill, read 12 November 2026: birth date; the authorized biography (1995) on legal work.
• P. Mulford, Your Forces (1887-1888), vol. I, vol. II.
• Locke and Latham, American Psychologist, 2002, doi (full text).
• Schweitzer, Ordóñez and Douma, 2004, doi; Ordóñez and colleagues, 2009, doi.
• Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006, doi; Wang, Wang and Gai, 2021, doi; Oettingen and Mayer, 2002, doi.
• Wood, Perunovic and Lee, 2009, doi; Hatzigeorgiadis and colleagues, 2011, doi; Vallerand and colleagues, 2010, doi. Studies: abstracts read unless marked.