Hill’s name is genuinely on the sentence: it is printed on p. 247 of Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion (Fawcett Crest, 1970), the book he shares with co-author E. Harold Keown. But the same line was already circulating unsigned — word for word in a 1963 dental journal and a 1968 student paper, in garbled form in a 1965 classified ad — so the earliest documented printings carry no author, and nothing ties the wording to anything Hill published earlier. Barry Popik, who compiled that record, adds that Hill may well have used the saying before then in lectures or articles.
“The ladder of success is never crowded at the top” attributed to Napoleon Hill. Printed in Napoleon Hill and E. Harold Keown, Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion (Fawcett Crest, 1970), p. 247; but the line was already in print, unattributed, in 1963. It is not in Think and Grow Rich.
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
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Provenance
Where the sentence actually appears
Earliest known printing
West Virginia Dental Journal, vols. 36–37 (1963), p. 35 — unattributed
Earliest printing under Hill’s name
Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion
Publication
Napoleon Hill & E. Harold Keown, New York: Fawcett Crest, 1970, p. 247
Not found in
Think and Grow Rich (1937)
The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.
As printed in 1970
Popik records the line at p. 247 as a free-standing maxim, with no surrounding argument quoted — the same way it ran in 1963, where the West Virginia Dental Journal printed it in capitals with no author attached. (Google Books dates that volume 1962; Popik corrects the reading to 1963.)
1965 and 1968 — a classified ad in The News of Van Nuys, California and a fraternity column in the Tri-State Triangle both run the line as an anonymous slogan, still with no writer’s name, in the same citation list ↗.
1970 — Napoleon Hill and E. Harold Keown print it on p. 247 of Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion, the year Hill died; the Fawcett Crest edition is scanned at the Internet Archive ↗. This is the earliest appearance under Hill’s name that Popik documents.
Nothing here is safely public domain. The earliest documented printing, in 1963, carries no author, so no rights holder can be identified for the wording itself — and the earliest printing under Hill’s name, Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion (1970), is a modern in-copyright book. Treat the sentence as a short maxim of unknown ownership, not as free-and-clear text; only the nineteenth-century ancestor proverb, ‘there’s always room at the top’, is genuinely out of copyright, and that is different wording.
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’s wrong with the usual credit
Hill really did print this sentence, which makes the quote unusual: the name is half-right and everything attached to it is wrong.
✕
The bookThink and Grow Rich (1937) Wrong source
Quote pages, posters and social posts routinely file the line under Hill’s famous 1937 bestseller. It is not there — a searchable full text of the book contains no occurrence of ‘crowded at the top’, and its three uses of ‘ladder’ are unrelated (‘half way up the ladder’, ‘the ladder of creative effort’) — and the earliest printing anyone has documented is 1963, twenty-six years after the book appeared, per Barry Popik’s chronology ↗.
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The coinageNapoleon Hill Coinage undocumented
Before Hill’s 1970 book, the line runs three times with no author attached: a 1963 West Virginia Dental Journal line set in capitals, a 1965 Van Nuys classified ad and a 1968 Tri-State College student column, all listed by Popik ↗. Popik does not rule Hill out — he thinks it probable Hill was using the saying earlier in lectures or articles — but no such use has ever been documented, and Hill shared that 1970 title with E. Harold Keown, so even the book page cannot be pinned on Hill alone.
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The citationDo It Now! (2016) Posthumous anthology
✓The honest version: a mid-century motto in print unsigned by 1963, whose coiner is undocumented. It acquired a famous name seven years later when Hill and Keown put it in Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion — and Barry Popik, who compiled the citation record ↗, allows that Hill himself may have been circulating it earlier in lectures or articles, though no such use is documented.
Context
The staircase before the ladder
The thought is far older than Hill. Nineteenth-century America already had the proverb ‘there’s always room at the top’, usually told as a Daniel Webster anecdote: warned off the law because the profession was overcrowded, the young Webster is supposed to have replied that there was room enough at the top. The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation for the phrase is an 1866 Maine newspaper retelling exactly that story, collected with the earlier versions by Barry Popik ↗.
By 1871 a Louisiana paper was printing verse built on the same contrast — jammed at the bottom, empty at the top — which is the whole argument of the modern line already fully formed. The twentieth century swapped Webster’s staircase for a ladder, dressed it as an office motto, and eventually pinned a famous motivational name on it.
Remember the low grounds are crowded, / But there’s always room at the top. — anonymous newspaper verse, 1871
Even the Webster version is hearsay
The earliest retellings do not claim to quote Webster directly. Edward Everett Hale’s 1852 sermon footnotes the remark as ‘Mr. Webster’s, as I have heard it quoted, as if used by him in conversation’, and an 1855 essay collection introduces it with ‘Mr. Webster is said to have stated’. Both give the words as ‘there is room higher up’, not the familiar ‘room at the top’ — see Popik’s transcriptions ↗. The proverb this quote descends from is itself an attribution problem.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1883–1970 · American self-help author, journalist & lecturer
Napoleon Hill built the template for American success writing with Think and Grow Rich (1937), still among the best-selling self-help books ever published. The book rests on a claimed commission from Andrew Carnegie to codify the habits of the rich — a collaboration for which historians have never found supporting evidence, along with much of the rest of Hill’s self-told biography. He kept publishing to the end of his life in 1970, and the foundation and estate that survive him have issued compilations under his name ever since, which is how lines he merely quoted end up filed as things he said.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Napoleon Hill and E. Harold Keown, Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1970), 247. Earliest documented printing, unattributed: West Virginia Dental Journal 36–37 (1963): 35, per Barry Popik.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The ladder of success is never crowded at the top’?” Last verified 18 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-ladder-of-success-is-never-crowded-at-the-top/