Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, is the granddaddy of all self-help books. Napoleon Hill interviewed successful industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and distilled their wisdom into 13 principles of wealth creation. The book has sold over 100 million copies. Napoleon Hill died in 1970. His legacy is a cottage industry of motivational speakers who quote him without context, and millions of readers who have thought very hard about growing rich and remain exactly where they started.
Desire. Faith. Autosuggestion. Specialized knowledge. Imagination. Organized planning. Decision. Persistence. The Master Mind. The subconscious mind. The brain. The Sixth Sense. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation, which is exactly as weird as it sounds and involves channeling sexual energy into business success. Hill was writing in the 1930s, and it shows.
Some of the principles are common sense: have a plan, be persistent, surround yourself with smart people. These ideas are not unique to Hill. They're universal. The book packages them in 1930s motivational language that sounds grand but says nothing you couldn't find in a fortune cookie.
The parts about transmitting your thoughts to the "Infinite Intelligence" through your subconscious mind are, to put it gently, unsupported by evidence. The idea that thinking about wealth will attract wealth through cosmic vibration is the ancestor of The Secret and every manifestation coach on Instagram, and it's just as unfounded now as it was in 1937. What attracted wealth to the industrialists Hill interviewed was capital, connections, and timing — not vibrations.