50 pages • 1 hour read
Napoleon HillThink and Grow Rich
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1937A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaPart 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Power of Thought”
Thoughts have a huge impact on one’s success and financial well-being. The author illustrates this idea through stories of individuals who achieved great success by aligning their thoughts with their desires and persistently pursuing their goals.
Several anecdotes illustrate this. Edwin C. Barnes wanted to partner with Thomas Edison. Despite facing initial challenges, Barnes eventually secured an opportunity to work with Edison, leading to a successful business partnership. The narrative emphasizes the power of defined desire, persistence, and the alignment of thoughts with a specific purpose. In another anecdote, when prospector R. U. Darby gave up, he was just three feet from a gold mine. Darby later learned from this experience and applied the lesson to succeed in the insurance business, demonstrating the importance of persistence and learning from failures.
The book argues that opportunities often come disguised as misfortunes or temporary defeats, emphasizing the need to stay determined and focused on one’s goals. The concept of the “power of thought” is highlighted, suggesting that thoughts can be translated into physical reality through the application of certain principles. This is why it is important to be ready for success; when one is truly prepared for something, opportunities present themselves. The book warns against the common tendency to quit in the face of temporary defeat and encourages readers to persist beyond challenges. For example, a child successfully obtained money from the author’s uncle by persistently stating her need, showcasing the effectiveness of persistence in achieving goals.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “DESIRE: the Starting Point of All Achievement (The First Step to Riches)”
Desire is the starting point for all achievements. Edwin C. Barnes had a burning desire to become the business associate of Thomas Edison, and he succeeded. Barnes’s success is attributed to his defined goal, determination, and persistence.
The chapter outlines six practical steps to transmute desire for riches into its financial equivalent:
1. Clearly define the exact amount of money desired.
2. Determine what you intend to give in return for the money.
3. Establish a definite date for possessing the desired money.
4. Create a specific plan and take immediate action.
5. Write a clear statement of your financial goal and plans.
6. Read your written statement aloud twice daily, believing and feeling as if you already possess the money.
Emphasizing the need to burn all bridges and cut off all sources of retreat to ensure success, the chapter highlights the role of practical dreaming and the importance of being open-minded in the pursuit of wealth and success.
The story of Arnold Schwarzenegger is presented as a contemporary example of converting desire into action and achievement. Additionally, the chapter includes the story of Hill’s son Blair, who was born with an undeveloped ear that doctors assumed would result in permanent deafness. Hill credits Blair’s persistent desire, coupled with Hill’s faith in and communication of that desire, with Blair gaining the ability to hear almost completely. Blair’s story illustrates that setbacks and obstacles can be turned into stepping stones if desire is strong enough and accompanied by faith. In a final example, a business associate defied medical predictions of imminent death through the sheer power of his desire to live.
The possibilities of desire are thus limitless, propelling individuals from adversity to success, restoring health, and shaping a fulfilling life.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Faith: Visualizing and Believing in the Attainment of Desire (The Second Step to Riches)”
The chapter focuses on the importance of faith in achieving one’s desires and accumulating wealth. Faith is a state of mind that can be induced through auto-suggestion. Faith, along with love and sex, plays a crucial role in coloring the vibration of thoughts and reaching the subconscious mind, which then transmits the desires to something the book calls the Infinite Intelligence. The author compares the development of faith to how individuals become influenced by crime through repeated exposure.
The book introduces the concept that dominating thoughts, mixed with emotions, become the driving forces behind a person’s actions and deeds. Thoughts with emotional intensity act as a force of attraction, attracting similar thoughts and vibrations from the ether. Thus, it is important to understand and utilize auto-suggestion to overcome weaknesses, specifically lack of self-confidence.
The chapter presents Hill’s Self-Confidence Formula: The individual commits to taking continuous action towards their definite purpose, concentrating their thoughts on their desired outcome, and cultivating self-confidence through daily auto-suggestion. Thus harnessing the power of faith helped luminaries such as Mahatma Gandhi to influence millions through faith in his cause and Martin Luther King, Jr. to unite people in the struggle for civil rights.
The creation of the United States Steel Corporation also illustrates the transformative power of desire in achieving monumental success. Charles M. Schwab’s visionary idea, coupled with faith, imagination, and persistence, led to the formation of the corporation, resulting in a profit of around $600 million. The book argues that steel mills and equipment were secondary to Schwab’s idea; rather, his riches began with thoughts. The author stresses that the amount of riches one can attain is only limited by an individual’s faith and the power of their thoughts.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Auto-suggestion: The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind (The Third Step to Riches)”
Hill refers to auto-suggestion as a crucial tool for influencing the subconscious mind and achieving success. Auto-suggestion, or self-suggestion, involves the communication of thoughts and stimuli from the conscious mind to the subconscious through repetition.
Hill argues that no thought, whether positive or negative, can infiltrate the subconscious mind without the aid of auto-suggestion. Thus, conscious thought control and the deliberate selection of thoughts are conducive to one’s goals. While we all have absolute control over the material reaching our subconscious minds through the senses, many of us fail to exercise this control, leading to undesirable outcomes such as poverty. Drawing an analogy between the subconscious mind and a fertile garden, Hill underscores the importance of nurturing positive thoughts through auto-suggestion while safeguarding against the proliferation of negative ones.
The chapter outlines practical steps for utilizing auto-suggestion effectively. It advises readers to create a clear and specific statement of their financial goals, repeating it aloud with emotion and faith, visualizing themselves already possessing the desired wealth. Hill stresses the significance of persistence and concentration in maintaining focus on one’s goals, thus harnessing the power of imagination in generating practical plans for achieving them. Hill warns against skepticism and encourages readers to follow the instructions diligently, even if they seem abstract or impractical at first. By consistently applying auto-suggestion, individuals can gain mastery over their subconscious minds and attract the wealth and success they desire.
Part 1 Analysis
For his main idea—that the power of imagination and the subconscious mind is so strong that people who can harness its full potential can achieve whatever they dream—Hill uses a pseudo-scientific misconstruing of several concepts from the then relatively new field of psychology. In his reworking of then contemporary theories of the mind that demonstrated the effects of the subconscious on consciousness, Hill creates a magical connection between belief and reality, arguing that simply convincing yourself that a goal has been achieved is enough to somehow will this goal into existence.
Part 1 presents a series of anecdotes and examples that purport to illustrate The Mystical Power of Positive Thinking, though making this argument is often the work of rhetorical gymnastics. In Chapter 1, the author describes Edwin C. Barnes, who desired to become a business associate of Thomas Edison and ultimately succeeded. From this story, Hill draws the lesson that having a definite purpose and persisting until that purpose is achieved means that thoughts can lead to material success—a conclusion that elides Barnes’s education, preparation, connections, luck, and any other factors. Even more striking is Hill’s vivid anecdote of a dinner gathering in 1900 where Charles M. Schwab captivated the nation’s financial elite with a speech that ultimately led to the creation of United States Steel Corporation, then the world’s largest corporation. In reality, US Steel was the result of a merger of three steel companies; while first suggested by Schwab, the deal was spearheaded by J. P. Morgan, whose political and financial power allowed him to bypass antitrust concerns. By eliding over the historical realities of politics, capital, gatekeeping, monopolization, and other powerful economic forces, Hill gets to argue that it was Schwab’s “galvanic” speech, through its “magic” and “force” (66), that accomplished the merger.
Similarly, Hill transforms history to align with his ideas. References to historical figures like Columbus, Copernicus, and Beethoven in Chapter 2, and Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln in Chapter 3, emphasize the importance of dreaming, mostly ignoring the historical and socio-cultural contexts within which these figures operated and simply relying on his readers’ vague familiarity with their renown. By flattening their experiences into identical narratives of pursuing one’s goals despite obstacles and criticism, Hill reiterates the theme The Role of Desire and Motivation in Personal and Financial Success. Besides the ahistorical nature of these references, Hill falls into a fairly common logical fallacy. By only offering examples of historical figures whom we now valorize and who succeeded—and then attributing their success solely to perseverance—Hill is ignoring the millions of people in similar situations whose determination did not lead to achievement. This absence of counter-examples is a fundamental flaw in Hill’s reasoning. Besides being misleading, it does readers the disservice of insinuating that if they use his techniques and fail to achieve their dreams, the fault is theirs and not his system’s.
Hill’s personal anecdote about his son Blair, who was born with underdeveloped ears and was not expected to learn to speak, makes the narrative more relatable and compelling. It is unclear whether Hill’s description of Blair’s condition is accurate, but the intimate quality of a father refusing to accept that his son’s life might be limited is potentially moving. Hill describes his determination to instill in his son a burning desire to hear and speak, despite the doctors’ prognosis, infusing his narrative with his emotions—even if this dismissal of expertise goes against Hill’s general appeal to the authority and credentials of the famous people he has ostensibly been interviewing.
Hill primarily relies on metaphors and allusions to make his text more engaging; the use of comparison is also a way to paper over logical leaps. Some comparisons purport to explain Hill’s version of mind power. For example, in Chapter 1, the metaphor “thoughts are things” (1) is used to illustrate the tangible impact of thoughts when coupled with purpose and desire; by simply declaring that there is no difference between imagination and reality, Hill avoids having to prove that this is the case. Similarly, in Chapter 4, Hill employs the metaphor of the subconscious mind as a fertile garden, suggesting that without proper care and control, undesirable thoughts (weeds) can flourish. This metaphor allows Hill to skip over providing any evidence that this is indeed how the subconscious works. Other comparisons, such as Barnes “looking like an ordinary tramp” (2), heighten Hill’s message: Barnes may have been outwardly shabby (a condition many of Hill’s readers probably experienced during the Depression), but his determination was enough to propel him to success. Finally, Hill uses references to make his points vivid. In Chapter 2, to emphasize the necessity of full commitment, Hill alludes to a famous episode from history. In 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés burned the ships on which he had arrived to conquer the Aztec Empire as a message to his men that their choices were win or die. The image of burning ships thus symbolizes the commitment to success without any possibility of retreat.
