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Who really said it

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve

Napoleon Hill — but not in this wording Napoleon Hill 1883–1970 · American self-help author
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Hill really did craft and popularise this maxim — Quote Investigator ↗ dates his three-word conceive/believe/achieve formula to 1952 and credits him with it. What he did not write is this sentence. The words “of man” appear in none of the Hill instances QI documents, and the version Hill published under his own name, with W. Clement Stone in 1960, reads “What the mind can conceive and believe—the mind can achieve.”

Last verified 18 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” The maxim is Napoleon Hill’s, but the wording is not. Hill and W. Clement Stone published it as "What the mind can conceive and believe—the mind can achieve." (Chicago Sunday Tribune, 1960). quotle.info/who-said/whatever-the-mind-of-man-can-conceive-and-believe-it-can/

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 themes of success, purpose and hope. Theme: "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve". 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.

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Provenance

What Hill actually published

Documented wording
“What the mind can conceive and believe—the mind can achieve.”
Where
“Get Ready To Succeed!”, by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone
Published
Chicago Sunday Tribune, 1960
Earliest three-word form
1952 — a newspaper advertisement for a Hill course in Salem, Illinois

The first great advantage is that your subconscious mind begins to work under a universal law: “What the mind can conceive and believe—the mind can achieve.” Because you visualize your intended destination, your subconscious mind is affected by this self-suggestion.

Quoted by Quote Investigator from Hill and Stone’s 1960 Chicago Sunday Tribune piece. Note what is missing from every documented Hill version: the phrase “of man”.

Quote Investigator: conceive, believe, achieve

How we verified this

  • Read Quote Investigator’s article on the conceive/believe/achieve family ↗ in full. Its chronology runs 1906 to 2001 and lists every Hill instance it could document; none of them is the popular wording.
  • Read QI’s companion article on the two-word precursor ↗, which finds “What man can conceive, man can achieve” already in print in 1906 — when Hill was in his early twenties — and concludes its originator is anonymous.
  • Checked Wikiquote’s Napoleon Hill page ↗. It lists the popular wording, sources it to a 2005 secondary book rather than to Hill, and carries an editor’s note in the page source saying an earlier citation to Think and Grow Rich “does not appear to be correct”.
  • Per QI, what Think and Grow Rich (1937) actually contains is a different sentence about Edison: he knew “that the mind could produce ANYTHING THE MIND COULD CONCEIVE AND BELIEVE”. That is a precursor, not this line.

Because the wording in circulation cannot be tied to any specific work of Hill’s, there is no publication date to reason from and we assert no copyright status for it. The nearest documented wording appeared in a 1960 newspaper article by Hill and W. Clement Stone, which would be in copyright.

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 popular version gets wrong

Nobody is falsely credited here — Hill is the right man. Three smaller things in the popular version do not hold up.

Think and Grow Rich (1937) Wrong source

The sentence is not in the book. What is there, per Quote Investigator ↗, is a passage about Edison knowing “the mind could produce ANYTHING THE MIND COULD CONCEIVE AND BELIEVE”. Wikiquote ↗ carries an editor’s note in its page source recording the same doubt.

“of man” Later variant

None of the Hill instances QI documents — 1952, 1954, 1955, 1958, 1960 — contains “of man”. Hill’s own published form is “What the mind can conceive and believe—the mind can achieve.”

Anonymous, in print by 1906 Not the originator

QI ↗ finds “WHAT MAN CAN CONCEIVE, MAN CAN ACHIEVE” printed as the motto of a new order in 1906, with no attribution, and concludes the originator is anonymous. Hill’s contribution was adding believe and making the trio famous.

The honest verdict: yes, this is Hill’s maxim — and no, he never wrote this sentence. Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗ credits him with crafting and popularising the conceive/believe/achieve formula by 1952, on top of a two-word saying that was already anonymous and in print in 1906.

Context

Why it mattered

This is one of the most-repeated sentences in self-help, and its drift is unusually well documented. QI’s chronology shows the maxim being assembled in public over half a century: two words in 1906, Hill adding believe through the 1920s and 1930s, his own organisation putting all three together in a 1952 newspaper advertisement, and a staff lecturer using the finished form as a lecture title in 1954.

By 1978 Jesse Jackson had built his own version on it — “If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I know I can achieve it” — and by 2001 that one was being pinned on Muhammad Ali.

What the mind can conceive and believe—the mind can achieve.

Read the full story

The 1958 sighting is the closest a newspaper came to the popular form: reporting a Hill speech to the Rotary Club in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the paper wrote “According to Dr. Hill, whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” That is a reporter’s paraphrase of a speech, not a sentence Hill published — and even it lacks “of man”.

The pattern is ordinary enough: a speaker says a thing many ways over many years, newspapers tidy it, and one tidied version hardens into the quotation. What makes this one worth a page is that the hardened version then got attached to a specific book that does not contain it.

Explore

Filed under

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

Success Purpose Hope

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.

Conceive, believe, achievequoteinvestigator.com

The definitive chronology, 1906 to 2001, with every documented Hill instance.
What man can conceive, man can achievequoteinvestigator.com

QI on the anonymous two-word precursor, in print by 1906.
Napoleon Hillen.wikiquote.org

Lists the popular wording and sources it to a 2005 secondary book, not to Hill.
Think and Grow Richen.wikipedia.org

The 1937 book this line is almost always, and wrongly, sourced to.
Napoleon Hillen.wikipedia.org

Biography and the scholarly doubts about Hill’s account of his own career.

The author

About Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill

1883–1970 · American self-help author

Napoleon Hill was an American author whose The Law of Success (1928) and Think and Grow Rich (1937) shaped the whole modern success-literature genre. He spent decades restating a small set of maxims in lectures, courses, advertisements and newspaper columns — which is precisely why several of his best-known lines exist in a dozen slightly different forms, none of them quite the one people quote.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Hill, Napoleon, and W. Clement Stone. “Get Ready To Succeed!” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 1960. Cited in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: If My Mind Can Conceive It and My Heart Can Believe It, Then I Know I Can Achieve It” (29 March 2022).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve’?” Last verified 18 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/whatever-the-mind-of-man-can-conceive-and-believe-it-can/

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