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Who really said it

Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement

Written by Napoleon Hill 1883–1970 · American self-help author, creator of the 1928 Law of Success course
Verified Free to reuse

The sentence is genuine and appears word for word in Hill’s The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons (Ralston University Press, 1928), in Lesson Eleven, “Accurate Thought,” under the sub-heading DESIRE. It is not from Think and Grow Rich, where Hill later put the same idea in different words.

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement” Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons (Meriden, CT: Ralston University Press, 1928), Lesson Eleven, "Accurate Thought." Verified via Quotle.info

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Provenance

Where the line actually appears

Work
The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons
Location
Lesson Eleven, “Accurate Thought” — under the sub-heading DESIRE
Published
1928, Ralston University Press, Meriden, Connecticut
Author
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970)

DESIRE

Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement. Just as the electron is the last unit of matter discernible to the scientist, DESIRE is the seed of all achievement; the starting place, back of which there is nothing, or at least there is nothing of which we have any knowledge.

A definite chief aim, which is only another name for DESIRE, would be meaningless unless based upon a deeply seated, strong desire for the object of the chief aim. Many people “wish” for many things, but a wish is not the equivalent of a strong DESIRE, and therefore wishes are of little or no value unless they are crystallized into the more definite form of DESIRE. The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, 1928

Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of the 1928 printing, whose title page reads “Copyright, 1928, by Napoleon Hill” and “The Ralston University Press, Meriden, Conn.” Hill’s own capitalisation of DESIRE is preserved.

1928 course volume
Read the 1928 Law of Success scan
The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons (1928) — full text

How we checked it

  • Wikiquote’s sourced list for Hill files this sentence under The Law of Success (1928) — not under his later books — giving the exact wording in circulation today (Wikiquote: Napoleon Hill ↗).
  • We checked that against the text itself. An Internet Archive scan of the 1928 Ralston University Press printing carries the sentence verbatim in Lesson Eleven, “Accurate Thought,” immediately under the sub-heading DESIRE (1928 full text ↗).
  • A full text of Think and Grow Rich does not contain this sentence at all. Its closest lines are the chapter heading “Desire: The Starting Point of All Achievement” and, twice in the body, “The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE” (Think and Grow Rich full text ↗).
  • Quote Investigator has never taken this line up — a site search for the phrase returns no entry about it, so there is no competing origin claim on record (Quote Investigator search ↗).
Public domain

The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons was published in 1928 by the Ralston University Press, and works first published in the United States before 1931 are in the public domain there — so this sentence, in its 1928 wording, is free to quote. Later revised editions of Hill’s books are separately edited and carry their own modern copyright; the public-domain status attaches to the 1928 text, not to a current paperback.

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

The mix-up worth knowing

Nobody is stealing this line from Napoleon Hill — the author credit is right. What goes wrong is the book, and the wording.

Think and Grow Rich (1937) book mix-up

Hill’s most famous book has a chapter headed “Desire: The Starting Point of All Achievement,” and states in the body “The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE.” Those are close cousins, not this sentence — a full text of the book contains no “deeply rooted desire” wording anywhere (full text ↗).

Modern revised editions of The Law of Success edited text

A reader checking a current edition may not find the popular wording. The revised “21st-Century Edition” edited by Ann and Bill Hartley compresses Hill’s 1928 sentences into one: “Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point and seed of all achievement” (revised-edition scan ↗).

The sentence is Hill’s own, printed under the sub-heading DESIRE in Lesson Eleven, “Accurate Thought,” of The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons (1928) — nine years before Think and Grow Rich (1928 text ↗).

Context

Why this sentence, in this book

The Law of Success was the eight-volume correspondence course Hill built his career on, published in 1928 by the Ralston University Press — the sprawling original that Think and Grow Rich would later boil down into a single paperback (Wikipedia ↗). The line lands in the lesson on “Accurate Thought,” where Hill has just described writing out a “definite chief aim” and reading it daily; DESIRE is what he says has to sit underneath it, or the exercise is empty.

Worth knowing who is talking. Hill sold the course on the claim that Andrew Carnegie commissioned it and opened doors to America’s richest men, but historians doubt much of his self-told biography — the Carnegie collaboration “has remained unsupported by any evidence,” and no records survive of the interviews he claimed, beyond a brief photo opportunity with Edison (Wikipedia ↗). The sentence is authentically his. The empire of research he said stood behind it is another question.

DESIRE is the seed of all achievement; the starting place, back of which there is nothing.

Explore

Filed under

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

Success Purpose Work

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.

The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons (1928) — full textarchive.org

Searchable OCR text of the 1928 Ralston University Press printing; the sentence sits in Lesson Eleven under the sub-heading DESIRE.
Law of Success — 1928 scan (item page)archive.org

The Internet Archive item for the 1928 course, with page images alongside the text.
Think and Grow Rich — full textarchive.org

Shows what Hill's famous book actually says: "The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE" — not this sentence.
Wikiquote: Napoleon Hillen.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotation list that files this line under The Law of Success (1928).
Wikipedia: Napoleon Hillen.wikipedia.org

Biography, publication dates for both books, and the scholarly doubts about Hill's account of his own life.
Quote Investigator — search for this phrasequoteinvestigator.com

Returns no investigation of this line, confirming there is no rival origin claim on the record.

The author

Who wrote it

Napoleon Hill

1883–1970 · American self-help author and lecturer

Born in Pound, Virginia in 1883, Hill worked as a journalist and salesman before turning to success writing. His eight-volume course The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons appeared in 1928, and Think and Grow Rich — the book that made him a household name — followed in 1937. He died in Greenville, South Carolina in 1970. Historians have long questioned the biography he sold alongside the philosophy, including his claim to have worked with Andrew Carnegie.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons (Meriden, CT: Ralston University Press, 1928), Lesson Eleven, "Accurate Thought," under the sub-heading "Desire."

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/strong-deeply-rooted-desire-is-the-starting-point-of-all/

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