Philosophy of Achievement
Photograph of the head of a man with head tilted and rested on the back of his right hand while reading a book
Napoleon Hill holding his book Think and Grow Rich, 1937.
Hill's "Philosophy of Achievement," offered as a formula for rags-to-riches success, was published initially in the 1928 multi-volume study course entitled The Law of Success, a rewrite of a 1925 manuscript. Hill identified freedom, democracy, capitalism, and harmony as being among the foundations to his "Philosophy of Achievement". He asserted that without these foundations, great personal achievements would not be possible.
A "secret" of achievement was discussed in Think and Grow Rich, but Hill insisted that readers would benefit most if they discovered it for themselves. Although he did not explicitly identify this secret in the book, he did offer the following:
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. . . . You may as well know, right here, that you can never have riches in great quantities unless you work yourself into a white heat of desire for money, and actually believe you will possess it.
In the introduction, Hill states of the "secret" that Andrew Carnegie "carelessly tossed it into my mind" and that it inspired Manuel L. Quezon of the Philippine Islands to "gain freedom for his people." Although he mentions a "burning desire for money" repeatedly throughout the book, he suggests that avarice is not in fact his "secret" at all. Indeed, in The Law of Success, published nine years earlier, he identifies the secret as the Golden Rule, insisting that only by working harmoniously and cooperating with other individuals or groups of individuals and thereby creating value and benefit for them can one create sustainable achievement for oneself.
He presents the notion of a "Definite Major Purpose" as a challenge to his readers to ask themselves: "In what do I truly believe?" According to Hill, "98%" of people have few or no strong beliefs, which made their achieving success unlikely.
Hill declares that the life story of his son Blair is an inspiration to him, claiming that despite being born without ears, Blair had grown up able to hear and speak almost normally. Hill reports that his son, during his last year of college, read chapter two of the manuscript of Think And Grow Rich, discovered Hill's secret "for himself", and then inspired "hundreds and thousands" of people who could neither hear or speak.
From 1952 to 1962, Hill taught his Philosophy of Personal Achievement—Lectures on Science of Success in association with W. Clement Stone.During 1960, Hill and Stone co-authored the book Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude. Norman Vincent Peale is quoted saying that Hill and Stone "have the rare gift of inspiring and helping people" and that he owes "them both a personal debt of gratitude for the helpful guidance I have received from their writings."
The book is listed in John C. Maxwell's A Lifetime "Must Read" Books List.
Hill claimed insight into racism, slavery, oppression, failure, revolution, war, and poverty, asserting that overcoming these difficulties using his "Philosophy of Achievement" was the responsibility of every human.
Influence of Andrew Carnegie
Later in life, Hill claimed that the turning point of his life had been a 1908 assignment to interview the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. At that time, Carnegie was among the most powerful men in the world. Hill wrote, after Carnegie's death in 1918, that Carnegie had actually met with him at that time and challenged him to interview wealthy people to discover a simple formula for success, and that he had then interviewed many successful people of the time.
The acknowledgments in his 1928 multi-volume work The Law of Success,listed forty-five of those he had studied, "the majority of these men at close range, in person", like those to whom the book set was dedicated: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and Edwin C. Barnes (an associate of Thomas Edison). Hill reported that Carnegie had given him a letter of introduction to Ford, who Hill said then introduced him to Alexander Graham Bell, Elmer R. Gates, Thomas Edison, and Luther Burbank.
According to Ralston University Press, endorsements for The Law of Success were sent in by William H. Taft, Cyrus H. K. Curtis, Thomas Edison, Luther Burbank, E.M. Statler, Edward W. Bok, and John D. Rockefeller.] The list in the acknowledgments includes, among those Hill wrote that he had personally interviewed, Rufus A. Ayers, John Burroughs, Harvey Samuel Firestone, Elbert H. Gary, James J. Hill, George Safford Parker, Theodore Roosevelt, Charles M. Schwab, Frank A. Vanderlip, John Wanamaker, F. W. Woolworth, Daniel Thew Wright, and William Wrigley, Jr.
Controversy
The authenticity of many of Hill's claims have been widely disputed. Napoleon Hill's collaboration with Andrew Carnegie has never been confirmed either by Carnegie himself or the Carnegie estate, and Hill allegedly only started making claims of interviewing Carnegie after he had died. Aside from Hill's writings, there are no accounts of the meeting taking place. Carnegie biographer David Nasaw stated that he "found no evidence of any sort that Carnegie and Hill ever met" or "that the book was authentic."
Outside of Hill's own writings, and aside from briefly meeting Thomas Edison in 1923, the evidence is lacking for many of Hill's other claims of meeting other famous men. According to the official Napoleon Hill biography, the reason for this is that his photos, letters from presidents, and endorsement letters from famous men were all lost in a fire.
Aside from these and charges of fraud, Hill's other claims have been called into question. There is no known evidence that he aided President Wilson to negotiate Germany's surrender in World War I; that he helped President Roosevelt write his fireside chats; or that he was an attorney. There are no known records of Hill's meetings with the famous men he claimed to have interviewed.
Hill's works were inspired by the philosophy of New Thought and the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and are listed as New Thought reading.
Hill has been seen as inspiring later self-help works, such as Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill