Was Napoleon Hill a Liar? That’s a strong statement isn’t it? Do I believe that he was a liar? Of course not, I’m a huge fan of Napoleon and admire his work greatly.

Sometimes, however, I come across things that seem to be a bit of a stretch, maybe a little exaggeration of the truth by Napoleon. Today was one of those days. Earlier I was reading The Law of Success when I came across this paragraph:

… For more than twenty years I have been gathering, classifying, and organizing the material that has gone into the course. During the past fourteen years I have analyzed more than 16,000 men and women, and all of the vital facts gathered from these analyzes have been carefully organized and woven into this course…

That statement struck me as odd. Napoleon stated that he gathered vital facts and analyzed over 16,000 men and women in fourteen years. That means that he would have had to gather this information and do an analysis on the information on 3 people every single day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for 14 years without once taking a break. I find it very unlikely that back in the early 1900s when communication wasn’t the easiest (ie no skype around then) that someone could have prepared, gathered, and analyzed information from over 16,000 people.

So did Napoleon provide accurate information or did he exaggerate a bit on the numbers?

What do you think?