He Can Who Thinks He Can by Orison Swett Marden (All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim)

Orison Swett Marden, founder of Success Magazine, is also considered to be the founder of the modern success movement in America. He certainly bridged the gap between the old, narrow notions of success and the new, more comprehensive models made popular by best-selling authors such as Napoleon Hill, Clement Stone, Dale Carnegie, Og Mandino, Earl Nightingale, Norman Vincent Peale, and today's authors Stephen R.Covey, Anthony Robbins, and Brian Tracy.

Who was Orison Swett Marden?

He was the son of poor parents, born on a New England farm in 1850. He attended Boston University, and also Andover Theological Seminary. Graduating from Boston University in 1871, he took an M.D. at Harvard in 1881, an LL.B. degree, also at Harvard, in 1882, and studied at the Boston School of Oratory.

Book Contents
1908. Getting aroused; Education by absorption; Freedom at any cost; What the world owes to dreamers; Spirit in which you work; Responsibility develops power; An overmastering purpose; Has your vocation your unqualified approval? Stand for something; Happy, if not, why not? Originality; Had money, but lost it; Sizing up people; Does the world owe you a living? What has luck done for you? Success with a flaw; Getting away from poverty.
 

I PROMISED my God I would do it." In September, 1862,  when Lincoln issued his preliminary emancipation proclamation, the sublimest act of the nineteenth century, he made this entry in his diary — "I promised my God I would do it." Does anyone doubt that such a mighty resolution added power to this marvelous man; or that it nerved him to accomplish what he had undertaken? Neither ridicule nor caricature — neither dread of enemies nor desertion of friends, — could shake his indomitable faith in his ability to lead the nation through the greatest struggle in its history.

Napoleon, Bismarck, and all other great achievers had colossal faith in themselves. It doubled, trebled, even quadrupled the ordinary power of these men. In no other way can we account for the achievements of Luther, Wesley, or Savonarola. Without this sublime faith, this confidence in her mission, how could the simple country maiden, Jeanne d'Arc, have led and controlled the French army? This divine self-confidence multiplied her power a thousandfold, until even the king obeyed her, and she led his stalwart troops as if they were children.

After William Pitt was dismissed from office, he said to the Duke of Devonshire, "I am sure I can save this country, and that nobody else can." "For eleven weeks," says Bancroft, "England was without a minister. At length the king and the aristocracy recognized Pitt's ascendancy and yielded to him the reins."

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