"Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession"
About this Quote
Hill is selling intensity as a technology: focus hard enough, long enough, and the mind will start behaving like an engine that can be tuned. The line is engineered to feel both empowering and slightly threatening. It flatters the reader with agency ("your ability") while quietly shifting responsibility for failure onto a moralized skill: concentration. If the method doesn’t work, the problem isn’t the method; it’s your insufficient obsession.
The key phrase is "burning obsession", a dramatic escalation that turns a private wish into something closer to a crusade. Hill isn’t describing calm goal-setting; he’s prescribing a psychological state. The subtext is that ordinary desire is cheap and common, while obsession is a scarce resource that separates winners from the merely hopeful. That scarcity is crucial to his brand of self-help: it creates a hierarchy that readers can climb, if they adopt the right internal posture.
Context matters. Hill’s work grows out of early 20th-century American success culture, when industrial capitalism and mass media were turning ambition into a consumer product. "Autosuggestion" borrows the aura of science from contemporary psychology and New Thought movements, giving mystical self-belief a more clinical wrapper. The quote functions like a bridge between spirituality and hustle: think your way into a different life, but think like a worker. It’s motivational, yes, but also disciplinary. It asks you to surveil your own attention and treat wavering as a character flaw, turning self-improvement into a full-time job.
The key phrase is "burning obsession", a dramatic escalation that turns a private wish into something closer to a crusade. Hill isn’t describing calm goal-setting; he’s prescribing a psychological state. The subtext is that ordinary desire is cheap and common, while obsession is a scarce resource that separates winners from the merely hopeful. That scarcity is crucial to his brand of self-help: it creates a hierarchy that readers can climb, if they adopt the right internal posture.
Context matters. Hill’s work grows out of early 20th-century American success culture, when industrial capitalism and mass media were turning ambition into a consumer product. "Autosuggestion" borrows the aura of science from contemporary psychology and New Thought movements, giving mystical self-belief a more clinical wrapper. The quote functions like a bridge between spirituality and hustle: think your way into a different life, but think like a worker. It’s motivational, yes, but also disciplinary. It asks you to surveil your own attention and treat wavering as a character flaw, turning self-improvement into a full-time job.
Quote Details
| Topic | Goal Setting |
|---|---|
| Source | Think and Grow Rich — Napoleon Hill, 1937. Appears in the chapter titled "Autosuggestion" (commonly cited line from Hill's discussion of concentrating desire into a burning obsession). |
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