Hill was a charlatan

• Occupy your surroundings with desire superstars.
• Substitute the roots of pessimistic energy with affirmative and optimistic energy. 
• Take action upon well-researched and thought-out knowledge.
• Put yourself in positive places, and surround yourself with good people.
• Burn those bridges, such that you commit and leave yourself without any other choice but to push on.
• Use mediums such as positive music, videos, and images to reinforce your desires.

• Everything which is tangible began as a thought: Anything that you create in your mind and trust that it is possible, you can achieve.
• Win or quit, pick a side. Winners do not quit and quitters do not win.
• Our minds receive ideas from the universe. The universe feeds us with ideas constantly.
• If you have a burning desire for something, you can achieve it.
• Failures don't mean that you have failed.
• Have faith - an absolute certainty with no fear, that you will succeed.
• Implementing your idea is the most important step of achieving your dreams.

"I think I have learned that the best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else." - Booker T. Washington

"The greatest sign of a success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." - Maria Montessori

Self-help literature, like information, exists as raw, uncurated, unexamined information, while social science is like knowledge, beginning with the aggregated data and the processes of thinking, developed and updated over time.

Many best seller self-help books like the much-celebrated How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie, written way back in 1936 provide a personal view of influencing and persuading others, which has later been proved to be ineffective.
This is because many of these books are detached from various social and economical facts, offering a myopic view of the world.

• Andrew Jackson won the popular vote by less than 39,000 ballots and took 99 Electoral College votes. John Quincy Adams secured 84, William Crawford won 41, and Henry Clay had 37.
• Clay, with the least votes, got the boot, and his supporters shifted their support to Adams, who would go on to win the majority of the House vote.

After his inauguration, Adams selected Clay as his secretary of state. Jackson accused Adams and Clay of a "corrupt bargain."

The 1860 election was notable because it ripped the long-dominant Party (and nation) in half.

• The Democrats were unable at their 1860 convention to establish an official party line on slavery.
• At a second convention that year, the Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas, but many Southerners in the party selected Breckinridge as their man. Both would claim to be the official Democratic candidate.
• Lincoln snared 40% of the popular vote but took most of the North in the Electoral College.
• Douglas was second in the popular vote but took only Missouri.
• Breckenridge took most of the South.
• Bell's middle of the road policies earned him the middle of the road.

In 1861, delegates from South Carolina, and six of the Southern states formed the Confederate States of America and selected Jefferson Davis as their president.

• A combination of the stock market crash, royalty checks that ended, overextending himself while owing creditors left Hill worse off than before. 
• He attempted many business ventures related to inspirational writing and publishing projects but to no avail.
• Hill's wife divorced him during this time, grown tired of his poor decisions and failure to care for his family.

Just after the great depression, Napoleon Hill married again and also wrote and published "Think and Grow Rich", with the support and persistence of his wife.

This was an enormous success, but Hill and his young wife wasted no time spending more than they earned (a clear violation of Hill's own principles). Not long after, his wife duped him out of all the royalties of all of his works and left him penniless.

That midlife slump (not to be confused with a midlife crisis) is often nothing - just a natural transition due to the passing of time.

Those likely to notice it are people that seem to have everything going for them; they're achieving their goals, and nothing much changed, yet they feel less satisfied than they expected and think there must be something wrong with their lives.

According to a study by economists, the U-curve is generally noticed at age 46. It tends to appear in wealthier countries.

However, some economists and psychologists factor in the possibility that those who become happier in the studies are the same people who are content in their early years.

Thinking - the mixture of initiative, faith, willingness to win, and resilience - is more conducive to success than any other feature. 

... is the one stage that links thoughts and actions together:

Thoughts → Committment (or Desire) → Action.

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and a well-known philanthropist, also appreciates the power of reading, and how it can get you out of your head, seeing the world through another person's eyes.

He goes in isolation for a whole week, twice a year, with no stress, no interruptions, no other tasks to be done, and just reads, learning and focusing on innovation.

Elon Musk, the celebrated CEO of Tesla and Space X, is a fountainhead of innovations. He admits to reading 10 hours a day as a child, leading to a mind that is loaded with ideas and innovations.

Reading provides us with insights, perspectives, and ideas, nurturing our sense of curiosity, wonder and asking well-informed questions. Success comes easily due to a better understanding of the world around us.