Think and Grow Rich Summary

Think and Grow Rich has 15 chapters: an introduction, one chapter for each of the thirteen principles, and a long closing chapter on fear.

Introduction — the Carnegie secret

Hill sets up the premise: Andrew Carnegie gave him a formula, and it appears in every chapter but is never named outright, because only readers who are "ready" will recognise it.

The thirteen principles (chapters 2-14)

• 2. Desire — the starting point of all achievement; the six-step method for turning a wish into a definite goal with a deadline
• 3. Faith — belief as something you install deliberately rather than something you have
• 4. Auto-Suggestion — repeating your written statement aloud until the subconscious accepts it
• 5. Specialised Knowledge — general education is not the point; organised, directed knowledge is
• 6. Imagination — synthetic (rearranging what exists) versus creative (new ideas)
• 7. Organised Planning — turning desire into action, plus a long list of the causes of failure in leadership
• 8. Decision — successful people decide quickly and change their minds slowly; procrastination is the enemy
• 9. Persistence — the chapter most readers remember, built around never quitting after a temporary defeat
• 10. Power of the Master Mind — a group of minds working in harmony creates a force greater than the sum
• 11. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation — the chapter modern readers find strangest: redirecting sexual energy into work
• 12. The Subconscious Mind — the connecting link, which accepts whatever you feed it
• 13. The Brain — a broadcasting and receiving station for thought
• 14. The Sixth Sense — the "temple of wisdom", the principle Hill says cannot be used until the other twelve are mastered

Chapter 15 — How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear

The six basic fears: poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death — plus a self-analysis questionnaire.

Hill later published a heavily abridged edition in 1960, which was for years the only one in print; the 2004 restored edition put the original 1937 text back.

This Think and Grow Rich summary starts with the claim the whole book rests on. Napoleon Hill says that as a young journalist he interviewed Andrew Carnegie, and that Carnegie handed him a mission: spend twenty years interviewing the most successful men in America, find what they had in common, and write down a formula an ordinary person could use. Hill says he did it, and that the resulting secret is embedded in every chapter of this book without ever being spelled out, because a secret only works for a reader who is ready for it.

The first principle is desire, and Hill is precise about what he means. Not wishing — he draws the line explicitly, writing that there is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it. His method is mechanical: fix the exact amount of money you intend to acquire, decide what you will give in return for it, set a definite date, write out a plan and begin at once whether or not you feel ready, put all of it in a written statement, and read that statement aloud twice a day. It is goal-setting with a deadline and a price attached, and stripped of its 1937 idiom it is close to what modern productivity writing still recommends.

Faith and autosuggestion are the mechanism Hill proposes for making the desire stick. He treats belief as something installed rather than felt: repeat the statement often enough, with emotion, and the subconscious will accept it as fact and start acting accordingly. This is where the book turns from planning into New Thought metaphysics, and where a modern reader has to decide how much of it to take literally.

The middle chapters are the practical ones. Specialised knowledge: a general education is worth little, and what pays is organised knowledge directed at a specific end — Hill's example is Henry Ford, who did not know much but knew how to hire people who did. Imagination, split into synthetic (rearranging existing ideas) and creative. Organised planning, which includes a blunt catalogue of why people fail as leaders. Decision, where Hill argues that successful people reach decisions quickly and reverse them slowly, and that the habit of procrastination is near-universal among the poor. And persistence, the chapter most readers come away quoting, built on the idea that most people quit at the first temporary defeat.

Then comes the Master Mind, the concept with the longest afterlife: two or more people coordinating in a spirit of harmony toward a definite purpose create, Hill says, a third invisible force greater than the sum of them. Every mastermind group and accountability circle since descends from this chapter.

The eleventh principle is the one that stops modern readers. Sex transmutation is Hill's claim that sexual energy is the strongest human drive and can be redirected into creative and commercial work, that men rarely achieve great success before forty because they dissipate it before then, and that behind most high achievement is a woman's influence. It is a chapter of its period, and reads that way.

The last three principles — the subconscious mind, the brain and the sixth sense — move further into the mystical. The subconscious accepts whatever it is fed, so it must be fed deliberately. The brain is described as a broadcasting and receiving station for thought vibrations. The sixth sense, which Hill admits cannot be explained to anyone who has not mastered the other twelve, is a kind of intuitive access to what he calls Infinite Intelligence; he describes holding imaginary nightly councils with Lincoln, Edison, Emerson and others, and then says, in a passage sceptics enjoy quoting, that these figures began to feel real to him.

The closing chapter is the most durable part of the book and the least mystical. Hill names six basic fears — poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death — and argues they are states of mind, and therefore subject to control. He supplies a self-analysis questionnaire of more than fifty questions, and identifies the real enemy as indecision, which hardens into doubt and then into fear.

A summary that stopped there would be doing the reader a disservice, because the premise deserves scrutiny. No documentary evidence has ever been produced that Hill met Andrew Carnegie — no correspondence, no diary entry, no mention in Carnegie's papers — and journalists who have examined Hill's life have found a long record of failed ventures, unpaid debts and legal trouble that sits oddly beside a formula for guaranteed wealth. Even the sentence most people can quote from the book is not in it in that form: the famous slogan about the mind conceiving and believing was popularised in the 1950s, while the 1937 text says that the mind could produce anything the mind could conceive and believe. None of this makes the practical chapters useless — persistence, definite goals and mastermind groups are real advice — but the book asks to be read as a period document with a sales pitch attached, not as reportage.

Think and Grow Rich ends with fear rather than with money, which surprises readers who expect a triumphant last chapter.

The final chapter, "How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear", argues that before any of the thirteen principles can work, the reader has to clear out what is blocking them. Hill names six basic fears — the fear of poverty, of criticism, of ill health, of the loss of someone's love, of old age and of death — and insists that all of them are nothing more than states of mind, and that a state of mind is something a person can control and direct. He treats the fear of poverty as the most destructive of the six and the most common, and traces its symptoms in detail: indifference, indecision, doubt, worry, over-caution and procrastination.

He then hands the reader a long self-analysis questionnaire — more than fifty questions to be answered honestly, once a year, ideally with the help of someone who will not flatter you. The book's actual last move is to identify the true enemy as indecision: indecision hardens into doubt, the two combine into fear, and fear is what prevents a definite aim from ever being set. Hill also warns about what he calls negative influences from other people, and recommends deliberately insulating yourself from them.

As for the secret Hill promises in the introduction and says he will hint at in every chapter without ever naming, he never names it. Readers have argued about it for eighty years. The most common reading is that it is the combination of a burning, definite desire with unshakeable faith and persistence — thought made specific and then held long enough to become action. Hill's refusal to state it plainly is presented as a teaching method, and it functions equally well as a sales device, since a secret that can only be recognised by the ready cannot be disproved by anyone who tries the method and fails.

These are verbatim lines from the original 1937 text of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill:

"There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish."

"DESIRE: THE STARTING POINT OF ALL ACHIEVEMENT"

"Truly, 'thoughts are things,' and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a BURNING DESIRE for their translation into riches, or other material objects."

"There is no such thing as SOMETHING FOR NOTHING!"

One warning about the most famous "quote" of all. The slogan "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve" is attributed to this book everywhere, but it does not appear in it in that form. What the 1937 text actually says, about Thomas Edison, is that he knew the mind could produce "anything the mind could conceive and believe". The polished slogan came out of advertising for Hill's courses in the early 1950s.