Distilled from 500 interviews with the most successful people of an era — the framework that has guided more lives than any other system in the 20th century.
Andrew Carnegie gave Napoleon Hill his assignment in 1908: interview the 500 most successful people alive — every industrialist, inventor, statesman, and financier who would grant him access — and compile what they had learned into a philosophy of achievement that any person could apply. Hill accepted without payment or guarantee of publication. The work took twenty years.
What he found was not a secret. The most successful people in the world were not operating from private knowledge unavailable to others. They were applying, whether consciously or not, a consistent set of principles that governed the relationship between mind and achievement. Hill named those principles, organized them, and demonstrated their application in the lives of the people he had studied.
The 13 principles are not a checklist. They are a system — each one supporting the others, none of them complete without the rest. A person who possesses definiteness of purpose without faith will lack the sustained confidence to act. A person with faith but no organized planning will produce enthusiasm without results. The principles function together, which is why the framework has proven more durable than any single piece of advice.
The starting point of all achievement. Without a Definite Chief Aim — specific, written, dated — a person drifts through life moved by every wind of circumstance. Hill found that every person he interviewed who had achieved lasting success could name the precise thing they were working toward and had been working toward it for years.
Two or more minds working in perfect harmony toward a definite purpose create a third mind — invisible, more powerful than either individually. Carnegie built his empire through a mastermind of 50 men. Hill called it the most important discovery in his entire research: no person achieves great success alone.
Not passive belief but an active, trained state of mind — the deliberate conditioning of the subconscious toward a specific outcome through repetition, visualization, and action. Hill distinguished applied faith from wishful thinking by the presence of a plan and the willingness to act on it.
Always rendering more and better service than expected, and doing it with a positive mental attitude. Hill called this the only principle that guarantees a person can never be permanently displaced — because the person who gives more than is required becomes indispensable, and the person who becomes indispensable becomes powerful.
The sum of all qualities that attract people — not charm or likability in the shallow sense, but the genuine qualities of character that make others want to cooperate with you. Sincerity, enthusiasm, personal magnetism rooted in real conviction, and the habit of making others feel important.
Doing what needs to be done without being told. The habit that separates leaders from followers and self-directed achievers from people who are forever waiting for permission, direction, or ideal circumstances. Hill found it present in every person of significant achievement he studied.
Not forced optimism but the trained habit of approaching every situation with the expectation that something useful can be found or done. Hill identified PMA as the magnet that attracts cooperation, resources, and opportunity — and its absence as the invisible wall that repels them.
Genuine enthusiasm — rooted in belief in one's purpose — is contagious and self-sustaining. It is the emotional fuel that makes persistence possible and makes other people want to participate in what you are doing. Hill found that no person achieved significant success without it, and that it could not be manufactured — only cultivated.
The master habit — complete control of one's mind, directing it toward chosen ends rather than allowing it to be governed by appetite, fear, or the opinions of others. Hill called it the one quality without which all other principles remain potential rather than achievement.
The discipline of separating fact from opinion, relevant from irrelevant, and important from unimportant — then acting only on accurate information rather than assumption, rumor, or emotional reaction. Hill found this quality present in every great leader he studied and absent in most of the people who failed.
The habit of keeping the mind focused on a chosen objective until that objective is achieved — what modern research calls deep work, and what Hill understood as the foundational practice of all high achievement. Every great result, he observed, is preceded by a sustained period of focused attention that excludes competing claims on the mind.
The cooperative, harmonious effort of two or more people working toward a definite end — the practical expression of the mastermind principle. Hill found that no person who habitually avoided cooperation, who insisted on working alone or taking all credit, maintained great success for long. Achievement is fundamentally a collaborative act.
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit — if the person who experiences it has the presence of mind to look for it. Hill called this the most important and least understood of the 13 principles. He found that every person who had achieved lasting success had experienced significant defeat first — and had used the defeat rather than being destroyed by it.
The 6-volume series applies the 13 principles across the full arc of human achievement — from self-mastery to legacy.