Napoleon Hill is the most famous conman you’ve probably never heard of. Born into poverty in rural Virginia at the end of the 19th century, Hill went on to write one of the most successful self-help books of the 20th century: Think and Grow Rich. In fact, he helped invent the genre. But it’s the untold story of Hill’s fraudulent business practices, tawdry sex life, and membership in a New York cult that makes him so fascinating.
That cult would become infamous in the late 1930s for trying to raise an “immortal baby.” But even those who know the story of Immortal Baby Jean may not know that the cult was inspired by Hill’s teachings, practically using his most famous work as their holy text. Don’t worry, the whole story of Napoleon Hill only gets weirder from there.
Modern readers are probably familiar with the 2006 sensation The Secret, but the concepts in that book were essentially plagiarized from Napoleon Hill’s 1937 classic Think and Grow Rich, which has reportedly sold over 15 million copies to date. The big idea in both: The material universe is governed quite directly by our thoughts. If you simply visualize what you want out of life, those things and more will be delivered to you. Especially if those things involve money.
The past few decades have been a profitable era for all sorts of self-help and business success books. Napoleon Hill blazed a trail for an entire industry. But Napoleon’s early work is seen as “the source” when people get deep into self-help and business success literature. Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is passed around in certain business and real estate circles like some kind of ancient text. In fact, when The Secret emerged on the scene in the mid-2000s, countless entrepreneurial writers would pen their own books, pointing to the works of Napoleon Hill as the true basis for what The Secret called the Law of Attraction.
You can see the influence of Hill in everything from the success sermons of Tony Robbins to the crooked business dealings of Trump University. In fact, you can draw a direct line to Donald Trump’s way of thinking through Norman Vincent Peale, an ardent follower of Napoleon Hill. Reverend Peale, author of the 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking, was Donald Trump’s pastor as a child.
“You always, when the service was over, you said, ‘I’d have sat there for another hour,’” said Trump of Peale. “There aren’t too many people like that. It wasn’t the speaking ability, it was the thought process.”
The legend of Napoleon Hill has grown and morphed over the years. He really did live an extraordinary life, just not the life that his thousands of disciples over the years have claimed. It’s just too bad that Hill spent most of his life as an utter fraud—a fraud who by hook and by crook was constantly reinventing himself.
More here – Paleofuture
Thank you Chris
Another informative article
Always easier to bag someone when they are not around to defend themselves. Regardless of Hill’s ‘alleged’ personal flaws I’m sure humanity would be in a far better place if each of us lived by the principles that Hill espoused.
Wait, do mean like Hill wrote about Carnegie and Mellett after they were dead so they couldn’t refute his claims?
As to living by Hills principles and the world being a better place, it is the consequences of actions that give meaning, not the intentions. And the consequences of Hills actions are a raft of people decieved and robbed.
Tye
I got the feeling it was all about getting something from nothing and how many people would fall for that.
From the colourful and entertaining piece above:
“People still in the midst of the Great Depression wanted to hear that there was a way out of poverty and despair; if only they would follow his steps of positive thinking, visualization, and hard work.”
This sums up what I understood “Think and Grow Rich” to be about. Perhaps Oliver gave birth to his gospel in the hope that one day he might actually be able to follow it. Sometimes we can write (or blog) about something more to remind ourselves than to preach to anyone else.
Does the author of an idea need to have a particular benchmark award of integrity before that idea can be useful?