Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) was an American self-help author and one of the founding fathers of the personal-development genre. At the request of Andrew Carnegie, he spent more than two decades interviewing over five hundred successful figures — including Henry Ford and Thomas Edison — to distil the philosophy underlying achievement into his monumental study, The Law of Success.

His landmark book Think and Grow Rich (1937) turned those interviews into thirteen simple principles of attainment — desire, faith, persistence, decision and the mastermind alliance among them — and sold tens of millions of copies, becoming a bible of ambition for generations of entrepreneurs. Hill also advised US presidents and lectured widely on the psychology of success. His teaching that a definite purpose, backed by organised belief, can move the world continues to echo through modern business and motivational writing.