"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed"
About this Quote
Hill sells altruism as a power move, and that’s exactly why the line sticks. “Literally true” isn’t just emphasis; it’s a preemptive strike against cynics who hear “help others” and file it under Sunday-school platitudes. Hill wants you to treat generosity like a measurable technology for advancement: the fastest route to your own success runs through someone else’s win.
The subtext is transactional, even when it wears a halo. “Best and quickest” narrows morality into a performance metric. He’s not arguing that helping is noble; he’s arguing it’s efficient. That framing is pure early-20th-century American self-help: the gospel of hustle translated into social relations. In Hill’s world, relationships are leverage, and goodwill is a form of capital that compounds - introductions, referrals, loyalty, reputational lift. You help someone climb, and you’ve built an ally, a testimonial, a future obligation. The “literally” does extra work here: it asserts a law of social physics, not a preference.
Context matters. Hill’s career grew out of an era obsessed with “success literature,” networking, and the mythology of the self-made man - a mythology that needed a moral varnish to feel respectable. This quote supplies it. It lets ambitious readers see themselves as communal builders while staying firmly committed to personal gain.
What makes it effective is its double offer: permission to want more, and a strategy that sounds virtuous. It flatters the reader as both pragmatic and good, a rare two-for-one in the market of motivation.
The subtext is transactional, even when it wears a halo. “Best and quickest” narrows morality into a performance metric. He’s not arguing that helping is noble; he’s arguing it’s efficient. That framing is pure early-20th-century American self-help: the gospel of hustle translated into social relations. In Hill’s world, relationships are leverage, and goodwill is a form of capital that compounds - introductions, referrals, loyalty, reputational lift. You help someone climb, and you’ve built an ally, a testimonial, a future obligation. The “literally” does extra work here: it asserts a law of social physics, not a preference.
Context matters. Hill’s career grew out of an era obsessed with “success literature,” networking, and the mythology of the self-made man - a mythology that needed a moral varnish to feel respectable. This quote supplies it. It lets ambitious readers see themselves as communal builders while staying firmly committed to personal gain.
What makes it effective is its double offer: permission to want more, and a strategy that sounds virtuous. It flatters the reader as both pragmatic and good, a rare two-for-one in the market of motivation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Servant Leadership |
|---|---|
| Source | Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937). Quotation commonly attributed to Hill; referenced in public quote collections (see Wikiquote). |
More Quotes by Napoleon
Add to List
