W. Clement Stone
American New Thought author (1902-2002)
William Clement Stone (May 4, 1902 – September 3, 2002) was an American businessman, philanthropist and New Thought self-help book author.
Biography
Stone was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 4, 1902. His father died in 1905 leaving his family in debt. In 1908 he hawked newspapers on the South Side of Chicago while his mother worked as a dressmaker. By 1915 he owned his own newsstand. In 1918 he moved to Detroit to sell casualty insurance for his mother.
Stone dropped out of high school to sell insurance full-time. He received a diploma from the YMCA Central High School in Chicago. He took courses at Detroit College of Law (now, Michigan State University College of Law) and Northwestern University.
Much of what is known about Stone comes from his autobiography The Success System That Never Fails.
“W. Clement Stone” enters the record as american New Thought author (1902-2002). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Clement, Stone and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“W. Clement Stone” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Clement, Stone and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2536671. VIAF identifies the subject as 112090051. The Library of Congress control number is n87873391. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1902, 2002, 1905 and 1908.
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This entry incorporates text from “W. Clement Stone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.