Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)

"Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve." - Napoleon Hill

American born Napoleon Hill is considered to have influenced more people into success than any other person in history. He has been perhaps the most influential man in the area of personal success technique development, primarily through his classic book Think and Grow Rich which has helped million of the people and has been important in the life of many successful people such as W. Clement Stone and Og Mandino.

Napoleon Hill was born into poverty in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. At the age of 10 his mother died, and two years later his father remarried. He became a very rebellious boy, but grew up to be an incredible man. He began his writing career at age 13 as a "mountain reporter" for small town newspapers and went on to become America's most beloved motivational author. Fighting against all class of great disadvantages and pressures, he dedicated more than 25 years of his life to define the reasons by which so many people fail to achieve true financial success and happiness in their life.

During this time he achieved great success as an attorney and journalist. His early career as a reporter helped finance his way through law school. He was given an assignment to write a series of success stories of famous men, and his big break came when he was asked to interview steel-magnate Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie commissioned Hill to interview over 500 millionaires to find a success formula that could be used by the average person. These included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, Charles M. Schwab, Theodore Roosevelt, William Wrigley Jr, John Wanamaker, WIlliam Jennings Bryan, George Eastman, Woodrow Wilson, William H. Taft, John D. Rockefeller, F. W. Woolworth, Jennings Randolph, among others.

He became an advisor to Andrew Carnegie, and with Carnegie's help he formulated a philosophy of success, drawing on the thoughts and experience of a multitude of rags-to-riches tycoons. It took Hill over 20 years to produce his book, a classic in the Personal Development field called Think and Grow Rich. This book has sold over 7 million copies and has helped thousands achieve success. The secret to success is very simple but you'll have to read the book to find out what it is!

Napoleon Hill passed away in November 1970 after a long and successful career writing, teaching, and lecturing about the principles of success. His work stands as a monument to individual achievement and is the cornerstone of modern motivation. His book, Think and Grow Rich, is the all time best-seller in the field.

In recent years The Napoleon Hill Foundation has published his bestselling writings worldwide, giving him immense influence around the globe.

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Here are some interesting observations by one of the greatest gurus on achieving success, Napoleon Hill:

"Before us lie two paths -- honesty and dishonesty. The shortsighted embark on the dishonest path; the wise on the honest. For the wise know the truth; in helping others we help ourselves; and in hurting others we hurt ourselves. Character overshadows money, and trust rises above fame. Honesty is still the best policy.

"Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge."

"Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements."

"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit."

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit."

"Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it."

"If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self."

"One must marry one's feelings to one's beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one's life."

"The ladder of success is never crowded at the top."

"The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail."

"Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you; until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy."

"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man."

"When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal."

"You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-lost record of the referee."

"I have proved, times too numerous to enumerate, to my own satisfaction at least, that every human brain is both a broadcasting and a receiving station for vibrations of thought frequency.

"If this theory should turn out to be a fact, and methods of reasonable control should be established, imagine the part it would play in the gathering, classifying and organising of knowledge. The possibility, much less the probability, of such a reality, staggers the mind of man!"

"The sixth sense is that portion of the subconscious mind which has been referred to as the creative imagination. It has also been referred to as the 'receiving set' through which ideas, plans and thoughts flash into the mind. The flashes are sometimes called hunches or inspirations.

"The sixth sense defies description! It cannot be described to a person who has not mastered the other principles of this philosophy, because such a person has no knowledge and no experience with which the sixth sense may be compared. Understanding the sixth sense comes only by meditation through mind development from within.

"After you have mastered the principles described in this book, you will be prepared to accept as truth a statement which may, otherwise, be incredible to you, namely:

"Through the aid of the sixth sense, you will be warned of impending dangers in time to avoid them and notified of opportunities in time to embrace them.

"There comes to your aid and to do your bidding, with the development of the sixth sense, a 'guardian angel' who will open to you at all times the door to the temple of wisdom."

-- Napoleon Hill

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 - 1882

The great forerunner to the New Thought Movement, or the man who did more than any other thinker of our time to prepare the popular mind to accept the new practical idealism and gospel of optimism, was Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was the pioneer New World diffuser of metaphysical and transcendental thought and Oriental philosophy; and this great movement, along certain lines, is largely a concrete and practical application of his metaphysical generalizations and unfailing optimism.

Indeed, it would be impossible to overestimate the broadening and illuminating influence on American thought exerted by Emerson. By nature a poet and spiritual philosopher, this one-time Unitarian clergyman had made an exhaustive study of Christian theological thought. He was ever broad-visioned and open-minded, ever looking for the good in the literature of aspiration.

In this respect he strikingly resembled the great Mohammedan, Akbar, who welcomed to his court scholars of all faiths, encouraging them to present their religious concepts; and when the Mohammedan zealots remonstrated with him, he refused to yield to the narrow-minded sectarians, saying in substance what Tennyson thus beautifully clothes in verse:

"There is light in all,
And light with more or less of shade,
In all man's modes of worship."
The German transcendental philosophy held special charm for Emerson, and from it he turned to Plato, the greatest of all metaphysical philosophers of olden times. Plato became his Bible for a time and was ever one of his chief sources of inspiration. But another rich mine of speculative philosophy awaited him. When the "Bhagavad Gita" fell into his hands he experienced far greater pleasure than is known to the gold seeker, who suddenly after long and weary searching, comes upon a rich lode. The "Bhagavad Gita" appealed to Emerson with compelling power. In Emerson's writings the metaphysical thought of India, Greece, and modern transcendentalism were fused.

A short biographical sketch of Ralph Waldo Emerson
by Joel Porte

1803 -1836
Born in Boston on Election Day, the 25th of May, 1803, Ralph Waldo Emerson was the fourth child of William and Ruth Haskins Emerson. His mother was the daughter of a successful distiller; his father was a liberally inclined minister, pastor of Boston's Oldest church (the First). Ralph's paternal grand-father, also named William, built the Old Manse at Concord and was himself a minister and graduate of Harvard College (1761); known for his ardent patriotism, he died, aged thirtythree, at Ticonderoga, where he had gone to serve as chaplain to the army. The Emerson line could claim descent in America from the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, who left Bedfordshire, England, in 1634 and settled in Musketaquid (the original name of Concord).

Ralph, who lost his father when he was eight, seemed destined to continue the ministerial line, and passed in due course through Boston Latin School, Harvard College (1821), and a year of divinity studies at Harvard (which were interrupted by eye trouble). Approbated to preach in the fall of 1826, he became pastor of Boston's Second Church two and a half years later, but left that post in the fall of 1832 because he could no longer serve the Lord's Supper (communion) in good conscience.

This disturbance in Emerson's professional life was preceded by personal tragedy, the death from consumption in February, 1831, of his nineteen-year-old bride Ellen (Tucker). Critically in need of recuperation (he, too, had a "mouse" in his chest), Emerson sailed for Europe on December 25, 1832. He landed in Malta in early February and enthusiastically worked his way north through Italy, Switzerland, France, England, and Scotland. Eager to meet great men, he sought out Walter Savage Landor in Florence, saw Lafayette in Paris, and visited John Stuart Mill in London, Coleridge in Highgate, and Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. But the one lasting friendship he established was with Thomas Carlyle.

Returning to America in the fall of 1833, Emerson immediately initiated his new career as a lecturer with a series on science. He also continued to preach sporadically while he wrote more lectures and planned his first book, Nature (published in September, 1836). Emerson settled in Concord in the fall of 1834, married Lydia (whom he renamed Lidian) Jackson the following year, and became a householder. Their first son, Waldo, was born shortly after Nature made its appearance. Emerson had a new vocation, a family, and the expectation of about $1200 in annual income from the settlement of his First wife's estate.

1836-1839
Emerson had lost his brother Edward to tuberculosis in the fall of 1834, and his especially beloved youngest brother, Charles Chauncy, followed the same grim path in May, 1836, leading Emerson to feel that a "gloomy epoch" was beginning in his own life (indeed, a year later, his lungs too brought the threat of severe ill-health). But there were in fact many compensations.

Apart from the publication of Nature and the birth of Waldo, 1836 brought Margaret Fuller, and probably Henry Thoreau, into Emerson's orbit. He was succeeding as a lecturer ("The Philosophy of History" series in the wirnter of 1836-37 was followed the next year by "Human Culture" and in 1838-39 by "Human Life").

Though the country fell into deep economic trouble in 1837, Emerson had the good fortune to receive the second installment of the Tucker estate in July of that year, bringing his invested capital to around $22,000. On August 31 he delivered "The American Scholar" address at Harvard (which Holmes called "our intellectual Declaration of Independence") and afterward had the pleasure of hearing himself toasted as "The Spirit of Concord" who "makes us all of One Mind."

By the following summer, the genial agreement disappeared when Emerson read the Divinity School Address, his controversial thrust at the Unitarian establishment, on July 15. Reviled as a heretic, Emerson was probably relieved to get out of town about a week later, when he traveled to Dartmouth to deliver an oration later entitled "Literary Ethics." His own spirits were deeply affected by the storm he caused, and there followed a period of intense self-examination and reflection.

But the die was cast. Emerson was no longer to be a sometime minister and amateur literatus but a professional lecturer and writer committed to the free expression and dissemination of new ideas. He reviewed his eventful revolutionary year in his lecture "The Protest" on January 16, 1839, and four days later preached his last sermon at Concord. Emerson's first daughter was born at this time. Named Ellen Tucker, after his first wife, she never married and served as Emerson's guide and support in old age.

1839-1847
Emerson continued to lecture in the winter of 1839-40 ("The Present Age") and drew a good audience and financial return, notwithstanding the continuing hard times. He supported the Whigs against the incumbent Van Buren in the election of 1840, despite their weak candidate and foolish slogan ("Tippecanoe and Tyler too"), probably because he thought his investments would be more secure with the Democrats out of office.

In July, 1840, Emerson and Margaret Fuller brought out the first number of The Dial, fervently hoping that it would "be one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics." Fuller would bear the main editorial responsibility until 1842; Emerson would then continue until the demise of the journal two years later. His First book of Essays appeared early in 184I and extended his reputation as a free-thinker (his Aunt Mary considered it a "strange medly of atheism and false independence").

In the summer, Emerson journeyed to Waterville College in Maine to deliver one of his most intense and orphic orations, "The Method of Nature," proclaiming ecstasy and metamorphosis as the ruling principles of the universe. Emerson's second daughter, Edith, was born in November, and one month later, on December 23, he expounded his "new views" to a Boston audience in "The Transcendentalist." Concord mourned the death of Henry Thoreau's brother John on January 12, 1842, but just over two weeks later, Emerson had a more severe and private grief to bear when his little Waldo was carried off by scarlet fever.

It was a devastating blow from which he never quite recovered, comprehending "nothing of this fact but its bitterness." On his death bed forty years later, he would exclaim, "Oh that beautiful boy." A Second son, Edward, was born in July, 1844, but Emerson's vision seemed permanently darkened by Waldo's death. In the second series of Essays, published in October, 1844, Emerson exposed his benumbed state in "Experience" and expatiated on the "Fall of Man." In the winter of 1845-6 he lectured on "Representative Men" and identified closely with the disillusioned and skeptical Montaigne. "Threnody," a moving elegy to the lost boy, appeared in Poems, published at the end of 1846.

1847-1882
Restless and badly in need of stimulation, Emerson set sail for Europe a second time in October, 1847, leaving his family in the able hands of Henry Thoreau. A substantial amount of fame (indeed, notoriety) prececed him, and his lectures in England and Scotland were well-attended and generally well-received. Both Emerson and Carlyle tried hard to transform their warn epistolary friendship into a new reality, but sharp differences of temperament and opinion stood ineluctably between them. Emerson met many notables and crossed the Channel to spend an eventful month in revolutionary Paris. He returned home, by way of Liverpool, on July 27, 1848.

In English Traits (1856) he would praise that great preserve of Anglo-Saxondom ambiguously, suggesting that the strength of the race might well be shifting to "the Alleghany ranges." Publication of Representative Men at the beginning of 1850 was overshadowed by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. Outraged, Emerson called it a "filthy enactment" and vowed not to "obey it, by God." In the summer of 1850, he dispatched Thoreau to Fire Island to search for effects of the drowned Margaret Fuller. Emerson lectured widely in the 1850's, traveling as far as St. Louis.

The Conduct of Life was published in 1860. Emerson was much agitated by the coming of the Civil War, and eventually looked forward to it as a cleansing fire. Initially put off by Lincoln's apparent lack of refinement, Emerson mourned him after his death as the "father of his country." In 1866 Harvard honored the former heretic with the Doctor of Laws degree, and he was elected overseer of the college the following year. In 1871 he traveled to San Francisco with his daughter Edith and her husband William Forbes, and visited an opium den, where he looked upon the "stupefied Mongolians" with "serene eye" (as Forbes's father reported).

On the 24th of July, 1872, Emerson's house burned, and the event precipitated a sharp downturn in his health. In the fall, he went abroad with his daughter Ellen, traveling to Europe and Egypt, and returned just after his seventieth birthday to a cheering crowd and a restored home. But his gentle decline into aphasia had begun. He died on April 27, 1882. Standing by his grave nine days later, Whitman, noted: "A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-inclosing, and sane and clear as the sun."

Neville Goddard (1905-1972)

nfluential New Thought Teacher

Neville Goddard, better known as just Neville, was one of the quietly dramatic and supremely influential teachers in the New Thought field for many years...In a simple, yet somehow elegant one-hour lecture, Neville was able to clarify the nature of God and God's relationship to every person. He spoke of God in intimate terms as though he knew God very well, which he did.

Joseph Murphy, a writer and lecturer, who studied with Neville in New York City, said of him: "Neville may eventually be recognized as one of the world’s great mystics,"

Born on Barbados in the British West Indies, Neville was the fourth child in a family of nine boys and one girl. One day some of them were playing near an old wind-swept hut by the sea. A seer lived in the hut and told them their fortunes, The older sons would go into the professions, into medicine, into business. The predictions for them came true. The Goddard family is one of the most prominent and influential families on the island.

"Do not touch the fourth one," the seer said, pointing to Neville, "he has a special mission to perform in the world – from God." And to Neville, "You will journey to a distant land and spend your life there." This prediction also came true. As a young man he went to America and worked in some of the department stores in New York City. Later, he worked in the theatre with the Schubert’s.

Under unusual circumstances, he met a black Jew, named Abdullah, who lectured on Christianity. Neville went to hear him, somewhat under protest, to satisfy the constant urging of a friend, "Whose judgment I did not respect,” Neville said, "because he made such poor financial investments."

Neville said he was seated in the auditorium waiting for the lecture to begin, when the speaker - who had never met Neville came down the aisle from the rear of the auditorium to the stage.

"You are late, Neville!" Abdullah said, "six months' late! I have been told to expect you." From this introduction, Neville studied with Abdullah seven days a week for seven years.

"Abdullah taught me Hebrew, he taught me The Kabbalah, and he taught me more about real Christianity than anyone I ever met," Neville declared.

Neville originally came to the United States to study drama at the age of seventeen. In 1932 he gave up the theater to devote his attention to his studies in mysticism when he began his lecture career in New York City. After traveling throughout the country, he eventually made his home in Los Angeles where, in the late 1950’s, he gave a series of talks on television, and for many years, lectured regularly to capacity audiences at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. In the 1960's and early ‘70s, he confined most of his lectures to Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

Neville once said that if he was stranded on an island and was allowed one book, he would choose, The Bible, without hesitation. If he could squeeze in more, he would add Charles Fillmore’s Metaphysical Dictionary of Bible names, William Blake, (“... Why stand we here trembling around, Calling on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?”) and Nicoll’s Commentaries. These were the books he recommended at his lectures.

In his lectures and books, Neville dealt solely with The Law until the year 1959, "For I did not know of The Promise until I began to experience it and have it unfold within me beginning that summer and continuing during the next three-and-one-half years. And this is Scriptural," he would say, "read it in the of Book of Daniel where it is referred to as ‘a time, times, and a half.' It comes to 1260 days in your experience of it."

In his use of The Law, he related how he made a sea voyage from New York to see his family in Barbados during the Depression, without any money of his own. He related how, by the use of imaginal power, he was honorably discharged from military service to continue his lectures during World War 11. He gave his audiences in San Francisco in the 1950's and ‘60s accounts of how others had made use of The Law. He discussed it on television in the Los Angeles area, "Learn how to use your imaginal power, lovingly, on behalf of others, for Man is moving into a world where everything is subject to his imaginal power," he taught.

In the latter part of the 1960's and early ‘70's Neville gave more emphasis to The Promise after he had experienced it. The use of imaginal power can change circumstances, but it is all temporary, “– and will vanish like smoke,” he asserted with another sweep of his hand. "Oh. – you can use it to make a fortune, to become known in the world – all these things are done – but your true purpose here is to fulfill Scripture," so he subordinated it and became as eager to hear accounts by those who had experienced The Promise, and sharing such accounts, as he had of those with The Law.

In the last years of his life he said, "I know my time is short. I have finished the work I have been sent to do and I am now eager to depart. I know I will not appear in this three-dimensional world again for The Promise has been fulfilled in me. As for where I go, I will know you there as I have known you here, for we are all brothers, infinitely in love with each other."

This discovery Neville called God’s “Promise." There is nothing any person can do to earn it. It is sheer Grace and comes in its own good time.

If you do not experience it in this life, then what?

"You pass through a door -- that's all that death is," Neville said, "and -- you are restored to life instantly in a world like this -- just this world," he was fond of saying to his audiences with a sweep of his hand, "and you go on there with the same problems you had here with no loss of identity – not old, not blind, not crippled, if you depart this life that way, but young. They grow, and they marry, and they die there, too, with all the fear of death that we have here. And if they die there without experiencing The Promise, they are restored to life again and again in a place best suited to the work yet to be done on them. And it continues until 'Christ be formed in you' and as 'sons of The Resurrection' you leave this world of death never to enter it gain."

"You are born once through the womb of woman, once from above," Neville insists you don't go through any womb again.

What about the fear many have of eternal hell and damnation? In response to this often asked question, Neville replied with a quote from Scriptures, "’Not one shall be lost in all my holy mountain.’ You are God and how could God eternally condemn Himself?"

Until we awaken and make this discovery, we are privileged to use a Law, given by God, to "cushion the blows of life.” The Law, stated succinctly is this, In Neville's words: "Imagining creates reality,"

Neville spoke without notes and followed his lectures with questions and answers. When he was asked if he had tapes of his lectures for sale, he replied, "I have no tapes. Others here are making tapes for their own use, Perfectly all right. But I have no tapes."

There are many tapes of his lectures In Los Angeles and San Francisco circulating, thanks to the loyalty and dedication of many of Neville's students and friends who have preserved much of What he said. His books are also in print.

Neville departed from the Earth plane on October 1, 1972, in Los Angeles.

Although Neville’s career peaked in the late 1950’s and early 60’s, his message continues to find a place in the hearts of spiritual readers throughout the world today.

James Allen (1864-1912)

An Unrewarded Genius

James Allen is a literary mystery man. His inspirational writings have influenced millions for good. Yet today he remains almost unknown...... None of his nineteen books give a clue to his life other than to mention his place of residence - Ilfracombe, England. His name cannot be found in a major reference work. Not even the Library of Congress or the British Museum has much to say about him.

Who was this man who believed in the power of thought to bring fame, fortune and happiness? Or did he, as Henry David Thoreau says, hear a different drummer?...... James Allen never gained fame or fortune. That much is true. His was a quiet, unrewarded genius. He seldom made enough money from his writings to cover expenses.

Allen was born in Leicester, Central England, November 28, 1864. The family business failed within a few years, and in 1879 his father left for America in an effort to recoup his losses. The elder Allen had hoped to settle in the United States, but was robbed and murdered before he could send for his family.

The financial crisis that resulted forced James to leave school at fifteen. He eventually became a private secretary, a position that would be called administrative assistant today. He worked in this capacity for several British manufacturers until 1902, when he decided to devote all his time to writing.

Unfortunately, Allen's literary career was short, lasting only nine years, until his death in 1912. During that period he wrote nineteen books, a rich outpouring of ideas that have lived on to inspire later generations.

Soon after finishing his first book, From Poverty To Power, Allen moved to Ilfracombe, on England's southwest coast. The little resort town with its seafront Victorian hotels and its rolling hills and winding lanes offered him the quiet atmosphere he needed to pursue his philosophical studies.

As A Man Thinketh was Allen's second book. Despite its subsequent popularity he was dissatisfied with it. Even though it was his most concise and eloquent work, the book that best embodied his thought, he somehow failed to recognize its value. His wife Lily had to persuade him to publish it.

James Allen strove to live the ideal life described by Russia¹s great novelist and mystic Count Leo Tolstoy - the life of voluntary poverty, manual labor and ascetic self-discipline. Like Tolstoy, Allen sought to improve himself, be happy, and master all of the virtues. His search for felicity for man on earth was typically Tolstoyan.

His day in Ilfracombe began with a predawn walk up to the Cairn, a stony spot on the hillside overlooking his home and the sea. He would remain there for an hour in meditation. Then he would return to the house and spend the morning writing. The afternoons were devoted to gardening, a pastime he enjoyed. His evenings were spent in conversation with those who were interested in his work.

A friend described Allen as a frail-looking little man, Christ-like, with a mass of flowing black hair...... I think of him especially in the black velvet suit he always wore in the evenings, the friend wrote. He would talk quietly to a small group of us then - English, French, Austrian and Indian - of meditation, of philosophy, of Tolstoy or Buddha, and of killing nothing, not even a mouse in the garden.

He overawed us all a little because of his appearance, his gentle conversation, and especially because he went out to commune with God on the hills before dawn.

James Allen's philosophy became possible when liberal Protestantism discarded the stern dogma that man is sinful by nature. It substituted for that dogma an optimistic belief in man's innate goodness and divine rationality.

This reversal of doctrine was, as William James said, the greatest revolution of the 19th Century. It was part of a move toward a reconciliation of science and religion following Darwin's publication The Origin of Species.

Charles Darwin himself hinted at the change in belief in The Descent of Man. In that book he wrote, the highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts..

Allen's work embodies the influence of Protestant liberalism on the one hand and of Buddhist thought on the other. For example, the Buddha teaches, All that we are is the result of what we have thought. Allen¹s Biblical text says, As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Allen insists upon the power of the individual to form his own character and to create his own happiness. Thought and character are one, he says, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man's circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought element within him that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development.

Allen starts us thinking - even when we would rather be doing something else. He tells us how thought leads to action. He shows us how to turn our dreams into realities...... His is a philosophy that has brought success to millions. It is the philosophy of Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking and of Joshua Liebman's Peace of Mind.

We become spiritually rich, Allen writes, when we discover the adventure within; when we are conscious of the oneness of all life; when we know the power of meditation; when we experience kinship with nature.

Allen's message is one of hope even in the midst of confusion. Yes, he says, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt. Only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him.

Tempest-tossed souls, Allen continues, wherever you may be, under whatsoever conditions you may life, know this - in the ocean of life the isles of blessedness are smiling and the sunny shore of your ideal awaits your coming.

And thus Allen teaches two essential truths: today we are where our thoughts have taken us, and we are the architects - for better or worse - of our futures.

The works of James Allen are eminently practical. He never wrote theories, or for the sake of writing, or to add another to the existing books. According to his wife, Allen wrote when he had a message, and it became a message only when he had lived it in his own life, and knew that it was good. Thus he wrote facts, which he had proven by practice.

Emmet Fox (1886-1951)

One of the most influential New Thought authors of the 20th Century

Emmet Fox was born in Ireland on July 30, 1886, was educated in England, pursued his spiritual career mostly in the United States, and died in France on August 13, 1951.

His father, who died before Fox was ten, was a physician and member of Parliament. Fox attended Stamford Hill Jesuit college near London, and became an electrical engineer. However, he early discovered that he had healing power, and from the time of his late teens studied New Thought. He came to know the prominent New Thought writer Thomas Troward.

Fox attended the London meeting at which the International New Thought Alliance was organized in 1914. He gave his first New Thought talk in Mortimer Hall in London in 1928. Soon he went to the United States, and in 1931 was selected to become the successor to the James Murray as the minister of New York's Church of the Healing Christ. Fox became immensely popular, and spoke to audiences in some of the largest halls in the city. He was ordained in the Divine Science branch of New Thought.

While Emmet Fox lived he addressed some of the largest audiences ever gathered to hear one man's thoughts on the religious meaning of life. His books and pamphlets have been distributed to over three million people and it can be conservatively estimated that they have come into the hands of ten million.

Fox's secretary was the mother of one of the men who worked with Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson, and partly as a result of this connection early AA groups often went to hear Fox. His writing, especially "The Sermon on the Mount," became popular in AA.

The influence of Emmet Fox in the spread of New Thought ideas and emphases lies not simply in the large number of his readers, but in the fact that he is so widely read my ministers of all denominations. A check in large denominational bookstores in various cities from time to time has revealed that Emmet Fox's books are in constant demand; and these are the stores in which ministers chiefly buy their books. They do not, of course, read it as New Thought, but they buy it and read it. There is nothing sectarian, certainly, in the titles "The Sermon on the Mount" and "The Ten Commandments," nor is there anything about them outwardly to indicate that they are New Thought, and nearly half a century after his death, the writings of Emmet Fox remain influential.

Earl Nightingale (1921-1989)

Personal Development Industry Pioneer

Earl Nightingale, enjoyed a remarkable radio career that lasted for more than forty years, but is probably best remembered for the recording that he wrote and narrated in 1956, called, The Strangest Secret. In his profound message he tells us that, "we become what we think about", and then, he spent the rest of his life, giving us examples of how this is true, and how to use this universal law to direct our lives in the most productive ways we can.

Earl, was born in Los Angeles, California in 1921. By 1933, his father had left him, his mother and two brothers. It was the bottom of the Great Depression and millions were unemployed. Earl’s mother worked at the WPA in a sewing factory to provide for her three boys. They lived in Tent City, behind the old Mariner Apartments on the waterfront in Long Beach, California, and while being poor didn’t seem to bother most of the other kids, it bothered Earl, and he wanted to know why they were so poor, while others, he observed, appeared to be so rich. Why some people were so miserable, while others, so happy. Simply, what made people turn out the way they do. At that time, no one that Earl asked seemed to have an answer to his questions. Not his mom or any of the other adults in his neighborhood.

From the time he was a young boy, he would frequent the Long Beach Public Library in California, searching for the answer to the question, How can a person, starting from scratch, who has no particular advantage in the world, reach the goals that he feels are important to him, and in so doing, make a major contribution to others? His desire to find an answer, coupled with his natural curiosity about the world and its workings spurred him to become one of the world's foremost experts on success and what makes people successful. Earl began a literary search that would stretch over the next twenty years - a search that would lead him to study the world’s great religions, philosophy and psychology.

His early career began when at age 17 he decided to join the US Marines. As a member of the Marine Corps, he volunteered to work at a local radio station as an announcer. The Marines also gave him a chance to travel, although he only got as far as Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was in his station, the morning of the attack on Pearl Harbor and was one of twelve surviving Marines on board the battleship Arizona that day.

After five more years in the service, Earl and his wife moved first to Phoenix then Chicago to build what was to be a very fruitful career in network radio. As the host of his own daily commentary program on WGN, Earl arranged a deal that also gave him a commission on his own advertising sales. By 1957, he was so successful, he decided to retire at the age of 35.

In the meantime, he had bought his own insurance company and had spent many hours motivating its sales force to greater accomplishments. When he decided to go on a vacation for an extended period of time, his sales manager begged him to put his inspirational words on record. The result later became the recording entitled "The Strangest Secret," the first spoken word message to win a Gold Record by selling over a million copies. In "The Strangest Secret," Earl had found an answer to the question that had inspired him as a youth and, in turn, found a way to leave a lasting legacy for others.

Over the next thirteen years, the demand for "The Strangest Secret" would grow so large that Earl accepted an offer of help to fulfill orders from an acquaintance, Lloyd Conant, who had a small mail order company. Together, they formed the Nightingale-Conant Corporation of Chicago and became the founding pioneers and world leaders in the personal development industry. They also developed a syndicated, 5-minute daily radio program, "Our Changing World," which became the longest-running, most widely syndicated show in radio.

When Earl Nightingale died on March 28, 1989, Paul Harvey broke the news to the country on his radio program with the words, "The sonorous voice of the nightingale was stilled." In the words of his good friend and commercial announcer, Steve King, "Earl Nightingale never let a day go by that he didn't learn something new and, in turn, pass it on to others. It was his consuming passion."

At the time of his death, Earl Nightingale’s multitude of recorded messages were played around the world, inspiring people from all cultures, nationalities and races, to live their lives to their fullest.

Today, Earl Nightingale is remembered as one of the greatest philosophers of his time, and his best selling programs and books continue to sell daily, and inspire new generations around the world, to reach their highest potential.

Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)

Champion of Positive Thinking

Born in Bowersville, Ohio, USA, on May 31 1898, Norman Vincent Peale grew up helping support his family by delivering newspapers, working in a grocery store, and selling pots and pans door to door, but later was to become one of the most influential clergymen in the United States during the 20th-century.

He was educated at Ohio Wesleyan University and Boston University. He was a reporter on the Findlay, Ohio, Morning Republic prior to entering the ministry and went on to author some 40 books. Ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1922, Peale served as pastor at a succession of churches that included Berkeley, Rhode Island (1922–24), Brooklyn, New York (1924–27), and Syracuse, New York (1927–32) before changing his affiliation to the Dutch Reformed Church so that he could become pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City (1932–84). There he gained fame for his sermons on a positive approach to modern living, which were regularly broadcast, first on radio and later on television. The church had 600 members when he arrived to pastor in 1932; it had over 5,000 by the time he retired in 1984. In 1969 and 1970 he was president of the Reformed Church in America.

Peale confessed that as a youth he had "the worst inferiority complex of all," and developed his positive thinking/positive confession philosophy just to help himself. In 1937, Peale established a clinic with Freudian psychiatrist Dr. Smiley Blanton in the basement of the Marble Collegiate Church. (Blanton brought with him the "extensive experience" of having undergone psychoanalysis by Freud himself in Vienna in 1929, 1935, 1936, and 1937.) The clinic was described as having "a theoretical base that was Jungian, with a strong evidence of neo- and post-Freudianism" (Carol V.R. George, God's Salesman: Norman Vincent Peale and the Power of Positive Thinking , p. 90). It subsequently grew to an operation with more than 20 psychiatric doctors and psychologically- trained "ministers," and in 1951 became known as the American Foundation for Religion and Psychiatry. In 1972, it merged with the Academy of Religion and Mental Health to form the Institutes of Religion and Health (IRH). To his death, Peale remained affiliated with the IRH as president of the board and chief fund raiser. Indeed, Peale pioneered the merger of theology and psychology which became known as Christian Psychology.

Peale applied Christianity to everyday problems and is the person who is most responsible for bringing psychology into the professing Church, blending its principles into a message of "positive thinking." Peale said, "through prayer you ... make use of the great factor within yourself, the deep subconscious mind ... [which Jesus called] the kingdom of God within you ... Positive thinking is just another term for faith." He also wrote, "Your unconscious mind ... [has a] power that turns wishes into realities when the wishes are strong enough."

His simple, optimistic, and dynamic sermons brought increasing numbers of parishioners and increasing fame to Peale. For 54 years Peale's weekly radio program, "The Art of Living," was broadcast on NBC. His sermons were mailed to 750,000 people a month. His life was subject of a 1964 movie entitled One Man's Way.

In 1945, Peale and his wife started Guideposts magazine; its circulation now tops 4.5 million, the largest of any religious magazine. Peale also published several best-selling books, including The Art of Living (1937), Confident Living (1948), The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), and This Incredible Century (1991). His most popular book, The Power of Positive Thinking, has sold more than 20 million copies in 41 languages.

With his wife, Ruth, Peale founded the Foundation for Christian Living in 1945. He died on December 24, 1993, at 95. Ruth carries on the work they began.