The Law of Success: Quotes by Napoleon Hill

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Are you looking for The Law of Success quotes by Napoleon Hill? What are some of the key passages worth revisiting?

In his book The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, Napoleon Hill argues that the key to success lies in your subconscious mind. Therefore, to achieve success in anything, you have to retrain your subconscious mind to work in your favor.

Below is a selection of passages with explanations.

The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons

In The Law of Success, Napoleon Hill—best-selling author of Think and Grow Rich—demystifies what it takes to achieve success.

Hill’s advice in the book, published in 1928, is based on one key premise: Your subconscious mind creates your life experiences according to your recurrent thoughts. These habitual thoughts train your subconscious mind to either work in alignment with your goals (creating successful experiences) or in opposition to them (creating unsuccessful experiences).

(Shortform note: The premise that success comes from alignment between your habitual thoughts and what you want has become increasingly popular since the publication of The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles in 1910. Wattles, like Hill, asserts that your habitual thoughts cause your success or failure. Other notable proponents of this theory include Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics), Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind), and Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking).)

The following The Law of Success quotes highlight some of the key ideas:

“You have been endowed with the power to use the most highly organized form of energy known to man, that of thought.”

Hill argues that your thoughts are powerful because they leave an impression on your subconscious mind, and the more often you think certain thoughts (the more habitual they are), the heavier the impression they leave. This impression trains your subconscious mind to form conclusions about who you are and what’s important to you—your personality traits and your deepest desires, fears, and beliefs. Your subconscious mind then influences you to automatically think and behave in ways that reflect and reinforce those conclusions.

For example, you habitually think about how lonely you are and you imprint this sentiment upon your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind concludes that you are lonely. As a result, each time you’re around people, your subconscious mind influences you to think and behave in ways that reinforce your loneliness—for instance, by making you feel socially anxious or urging you to push people away.

“You are a human magnet and you are constantly attracting to you people whose characters harmonize with your own.”

Hill states that your subconscious mind limits the people you attract into your life. He explains that the energy of higher consciousness permeates all conscious beings and connects them telepathically. Through this telepathic link, your subconscious mind orchestrates interactions that cause certain people to show up in your life. However, though higher consciousness has a telepathic connection to all conscious beings, your subconscious mind can only telepathically link to and attract people who reinforce your habitual thoughts.

Example: You habitually think that you’re unlovable and you imprint this sentiment upon your subconscious mind. Even though higher consciousness has a connection to many people who could potentially love you, your subconscious mind can’t telepathically link to them. Instead, it only links to and attracts people who reinforce your lack of self-love—such as those who also suffer from low self-esteem, partners who mistreat you, or friends who take you for granted.

The Law of Success: Quotes by Napoleon Hill