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Who really said it

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success

Attributed to Napoleon Hill 1883–1970 · American self-help author of “Think and Grow Rich”
Attributed Rights unconfirmed

Credited to Hill on every major quotation site, and circulated by his own foundation — but no book, speech, letter or article has ever been cited for it. The words “perspiration” and “unbeatable” appear nowhere in the full texts of The Law of Success (1928) or Think and Grow Rich (1937), so the line is consistent with Hill’s themes but pinned to none of his known pages.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success” attributed to Napoleon Hill (1883–1970). No primary source has ever been cited; the wording does not appear in 'The Law of Success' (1928) or 'Think and Grow Rich' (1937). Via Quotle.info

Can you use it?

We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.

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In context

Evoking the world of Napoleon Hill — American self-help author · "Think and Grow Rich" (1937). Theme: "Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The paper trail

Credited to
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970)
Documented source
None — no book, speech, letter, column or broadcast has ever been named
Checked against
The Law of Success (1928) · Think and Grow Rich (1937) · Outwitting the Devil
Best citation on offer
A 2017 print-on-demand quotation anthology, per A-Z Quotes

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. No source ever cited

There is no fuller passage to show, because no source text has been found. The Napoleon Hill Foundation’s own posting ↗ gives a different wording: “Patience, persistence, and perspiration make for an unbeatable combination for success.”

Napoleon Hill's sourced quotations on Wikiquote

How we checked it

  • Neither Quote Investigator ↗ nor Wikiquote ↗ carries this line. Wikiquote’s Hill page lists quotations from The Law of Success (1928) and Think and Grow Rich with page numbers; this sentence is not among them.
  • We downloaded the OCR text of the 1928 Ralston University Press edition of The Law of Success ↗ and of Think and Grow Rich ↗ from the Internet Archive. Across both, “perspiration” and “unbeatable” each occur zero times — while “patience,” “persistence” and “Carnegie” all occur repeatedly, so the scans are sound.
  • A-Z Quotes ↗, one of the largest sites carrying the line, cites no Hill book at all: its reference is a 2017 print-on-demand quotation journal. PassItOn ↗ and the rest give the author’s name and nothing else.
  • The Napoleon Hill Foundation ↗, which publishes and licenses Hill’s work and mails a daily “Thought for the Day” drawn from his writings, posts the line itself ↗ — in a slightly different wording, and without naming a source.

We cannot classify the rights, because we cannot identify the work. If the sentence turned out to come from The Law of Success (1928) it would be public domain in the United States; if it came from Think and Grow Rich (1937) or any of Hill’s later books, courses or columns, it would be in copyright and controlled by the Napoleon Hill Foundation, which asserts rights in Hill’s writings and trademarks his name. Since no source has been established, we assert no status.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What the citations actually lead to

Hill probably is the right name to have in mind here — but almost everything said about where the line comes from is wrong, and the sourcing that does exist is circular.

“From Think and Grow Rich” not in the book

The most common claim online is that the line is from Hill’s 1937 bestseller. It is not. In the complete text of Think and Grow Rich ↗ the words “perspiration” and “unbeatable” never occur once — though “persistence” occurs dozens of times, which is presumably how the association formed.

“From The Law of Success” not in the book

Same result in Hill’s other flagship. The 1928 Ralston University Press edition ↗ runs to well over a thousand pages and contains neither word. Wikiquote’s Hill page ↗, which cites both books by page number, does not list this sentence at all.

A-Z Quotes and the aggregator chain circular

A-Z Quotes ↗ is unusual in offering any citation — but it points to a 2017 print-on-demand quotation journal, not to Hill. Most sites, including PassItOn ↗, give no source whatever. Every trail ends in another quote collection.

The Napoleon Hill Foundation variant

Hill’s own estate circulates the line — and not in the popular wording. Its post ↗ reads “make for an unbeatable combination,” tagged #thinkandgrowrich but with no citation. Two competing wordings and no source text to settle them is the signature of an orally transmitted line.

Nobody has produced a page. The sentence is Hill-flavoured, Hill-branded and Hill-promoted, but until an edition or a broadcast turns up it is an attribution rather than a citation — and it is definitively not the line from Think and Grow Rich ↗ that people think it is.

Context

Why a Hill quote can be famous and sourceless at the same time

Napoleon Hill’s sayings did not spread the way a novelist’s do — page by page, with an edition behind them. They spread as slogans. Quote Investigator’s study of the “conceive … believe … achieve” formula found Hill’s own organisation pushing variants through advertisements, speeches and publications from the early 1950s, with the wording shifting as it went and eventually migrating onto other famous names entirely. A line promoted that way arrives in the world already detached from a page number.

The Foundation still runs a free daily “Thought for the Day” email “based on the writings of Napoleon Hill,” and posts single-sentence Hill quotations to social media without citations. Aggregators harvest those, other aggregators harvest the aggregators, and within a few years the sentence has ten thousand hits and zero sources. That is the exact shape of this one.

Promoted as a slogan, harvested as a quotation, cited by nobody.

Why we stopped short of calling it a fake

Hill wrote far more than the two books everyone searches. The Napoleon Hill Foundation is currently selling a reproduction of Happy Valley Proverbs, a 96-page booklet of “hundreds of powerful insights, guiding principles, and concise proverbs” that Hill prepared for employees of the LeTourneau Company and never released commercially. Material like that — along with his courses, columns and correspondence — is not in any full-text index we can search.

So the negative result is real but bounded: we can say with confidence that this sentence is not in The Law of Success or Think and Grow Rich, and that nobody has ever published a source for it. We cannot say it is not Hill’s. Until someone produces a page, the honest label is “attributed.”

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Resilience Work Success

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Napoleon Hill on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Hill's quotations carrying real page citations, from The Law of Success (1928) and Think and Grow Rich. This line is not among them.
The Law of Success (1928) — full scanarchive.org

The Ralston University Press first edition, with downloadable OCR text you can search yourself.
Think and Grow Rich — searchable full textarchive.org

Complete text of Hill's most-quoted book; neither "perspiration" nor "unbeatable" occurs in it.
Quote Investigator on Hill's "conceive, believe, achieve"quoteinvestigator.com

How Hill's organisation spread slogans from the 1950s onward, and how the wording drifted and later attached to other names.
Napoleon Hill — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography, bibliography, and the documented doubts about Hill's account of his own life and research.
The Untold Story of Napoleon Hillgizmodo.com

Matt Novak's 2016 archival investigation into Hill's business record and the origins of Think and Grow Rich.
The Napoleon Hill Foundationnaphill.org

The nonprofit that publishes, licenses and trademarks Hill's work, and mails the daily "Thought for the Day" quotations.

The name on the quote

Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill

1883–1970 · American self-help author · “Think and Grow Rich” (1937)

Napoleon Hill built the modern success-literature industry out of two enormous books — The Law of Success (1928) and Think and Grow Rich (1937) — both framed as the distilled findings of a twenty-year study of great industrialists commissioned by Andrew Carnegie. Historians have found no evidence for that commission, or for most of Hill’s other biographical claims, and Wikipedia's article describes him as a con man as well as an author. What is not in doubt is the reach: his phrases were promoted relentlessly by his organisation, and they are still promoted daily by the Napoleon Hill Foundation — which is exactly why unsourced aphorisms attach to his name so easily.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

How to cite this

No primary source identified. Circulated under Napoleon Hill's name by quotation aggregators and by the Napoleon Hill Foundation, which posts it (as “Patience, persistence, and perspiration make for an unbeatable combination for success”) without citation. The wording does not occur in the full texts of Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success (Meriden, CT: Ralston University Press, 1928) or Think and Grow Rich (1937).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/patience-persistence-and-perspiration-make-an-unbeatable/

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