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-EIGHT THINGS THIS BOOK WILL
-HELP YOU ACHIEVE
-1. Get out of a mental rut, think new thoughts, acquire new visions, discover new
-ambitions.
-2. Make friends quickly and easily.
-3. Increase your popularity.
-4. Win people to your way of thinking.
-5. Increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done.
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-6. Handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and
-pleasant.
-7. Become a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist.
-8. Arouse enthusiasm among your associates.
-This book has done all these things for more than fifteen million readers in thirtysix languages.
-
-TABLE OF CONTENTS
-A Biographical Sketch of Dale Carnegie........................................................................... 5
-How This Book Was Written And Why........................................................................... 15
-Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book............................................ 21
-PART ONE: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People............................................ 25
-1 - IF YOU WANT TO GATHER HONEY, DON’T KICK OVER THE BEEHIVE..... 25
-2 - THE BIG SECRET OF DEALING WITH PEOPLE.................................................. 37
-3 - HE WHO CAN DO THIS HAS THE WHOLE WORLD WITH HIM...................... 48
-PART TWO: Ways to Make People Like You............................................................... 65
-1 - DO THIS AND YOU’LL BE WELCOME ANYWHERE......................................... 65
-2 - A SIMPLE WAY TO MAKE A GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION............................... 75
-3 - IF YOU DON’T DO THIS, YOU ARE HEADED FOR TROUBLE......................... 82
-4 - AN EASY WAY TO BECOME A GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST..................... 89
-5 - HOW TO INTEREST PEOPLE................................................................................ 97
-6 - HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU INSTANTLY............................................. 101
-PART THREE: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking....................................... 112
-1 - YOU CAN’T WIN AN ARGUMENT...................................................................... 112
-2 - A SURE WAY OF MAKING ENEMIES—AND HOW TO AVOID IT................... 118
-3 - IF YOU’RE WRONG, ADMIT IT............................................................................ 127
-4 - A DROP OF HONEY............................................................................................... 134
-5 - THE SECRET OF SOCRATES................................................................................ 141
-6 - THE SAFETY VALVE IN HANDLING COMPLAINTS......................................... 146
-7 - HOW TO GET COOPERATION............................................................................. 150
-8 - A FORMULA THAT WILL WORK WONDERS FOR YOU.................................. 155
-9 - WHAT EVERYBODY WANTS.............................................................................. 159
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-10 - AN APPEAL THAT EVERYBODY LIKES........................................................... 166
-11 - THE MOVIES DO IT. TV DOES IT....WHY DON’T YOU DO IT?...................... 171
-12 - WHEN NOTHING ELSE WORKS, TRY THIS..................................................... 175
-PART FOUR: How to Change People Without Giving Offense..................................... 179
-1 - IF YOU MUST FIND FAULT, THIS IS THE WAY TO BEGIN............................. 179
-2 - HOW TO CRITICIZE....AND NOT BE HATED FOR IT........................................ 184
-3 - TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN MISTAKES FIRST................................................... 187
-4 - NO ONE LIKES TO TAKE ORDERS..................................................................... 191
-5 - LET THE OTHER PERSON SAVE FACE............................................................... 193
-6 - HOW TO SPUR PEOPLE ON TO SUCCESS......................................................... 196
-7 - GIVE A DOG A GOOD NAME............................................................................... 200
-8 - MAKE THE FAULT SEEM EASY TO CORRECT.................................................. 204
-9 - MAKING PEOPLE GLAD TO DO WHAT YOU WANT....................................... 208
-
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-A Shortcut to Distinction - A Biographical Sketch of Dale Carnegie
-by Lowell Thomas
-It was a cold January night in 1935, but the weather couldn’t keep them away. Two
-thousand five hundred men and women thronged into the grand ballroom of the
-Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. Every available seat was filled by half-past
-seven. At eight o’clock, the eager crowd was still pouring in. The spacious balcony
-was soon jammed. Presently even standing space was at a premium, and hundreds
-of people, tired after navigating a day in business, stood up for an hour and a half
-that night to witness - what?
-A fashion show?
-A six-day bicycle race or a personal appearance by Clark Gable?
-No. These people had been lured there by a newspaper ad. Two evenings
-previously, they had seen this full-page announcement in the New York Sun staring
-them in the face:
-Learn to Speak Effectively
-Prepare for Leadership
-Old stuff? Yes, but believe it or not, in the most sophisticated town on earth, during
-a depression with 20 percent of the population on relief, twenty-five hundred people
-had left their homes and hustled to the hotel in response to that ad.
-The people who responded were of the upper economic strata - executives,
-employers and professionals.
-These men and women had come to hear the opening gun of an ultramodern,
-ultrapractical course in “Effective Speaking and Influencing Men in Business”- a
-course given by the Dale Carnegie Institute of Effective Speaking and Human
-Relations.
-Why were they there, these twenty-five hundred business men and women?
-Because of a sudden hunger for more education because of the depression?
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-Apparently not, for this same course had been playing to packed houses in New
-York City every season for the preceding twenty-four years. During that time, more
-than fifteen thousand business and professional people had been trained by Dale
-Carnegie. Even large, skeptical, conservative organizations such as the
-Westinghouse Electric Company, the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, the
-Brooklyn Union Gas Company, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the
-American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the New York Telephone
-Company have had this training conducted in their own offices for the benefit of
-their members and executives.
-The fact that these people, ten or twenty years after leaving grade school, high
-school or college, come and take this training is a glaring commentary on the
-shocking deficiencies of our educational system.
-What do adults really want to study? That is an important question; and in order to
-answer it, the University of Chicago, the American Association for Adult
-Education, and the United Y.M.C.A. Schools made a survey over a two-year period.
-That survey revealed that the prime interest of adults is health. It also revealed that
-their second interest is in developing skill in human relationships - they want to
-learn the technique of getting along with and influencing other people. They don’t
-want to become public speakers, and they don’t want to listen to a lot of high
-sounding talk about psychology; they want suggestions they can use immediately in
-business, in social contacts and in the home.
-So that was what adults wanted to study, was it?
-“All right,” said the people making the survey. "Fine. If that is what they want,
-we’ll give it to them.”
-Looking around for a textbook, they discovered that no working manual had ever
-been written to help people solve their daily problems in human relationships.
-Here was a fine kettle of fish! For hundreds of years, learned volumes had been
-written on Greek and Latin and higher mathematics - topics about which the
-average adult doesn’t give two hoots. But on the one subject on which he has a
-thirst for knowledge, a veritable passion for guidance and help - nothing!
-This explained the presence of twenty-five hundred eager adults crowding into the
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-grand ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania in response to a newspaper
-advertisement. Here, apparently, at last was the thing for which they had long been
-seeking.
-Back in high school and college, they had pored over books, believing that
-knowledge alone was the open sesame to financial - and professional rewards.
-But a few years in the rough-and-tumble of business and professional life had
-brought sharp disillusionment. They had seen some of the most important business
-successes won by men who possessed, in addition to their knowledge, the ability to
-talk well, to win people to their way of thinking, and to "sell" themselves and their
-ideas.
-They soon discovered that if one aspired to wear the captain’s cap and navigate the
-ship of business, personality and the ability to talk are more important than a
-knowledge of Latin verbs or a sheepskin from Harvard.
-The advertisement in the New York Sun promised that the meeting would be highly
-entertaining. It was. Eighteen people who had taken the course were marshaled in
-front of the loudspeaker - and fifteen of them were given precisely seventy-five
-seconds each to tell his or her story. Only seventy-five seconds of talk, then “bang”
-went the gavel, and the chairman shouted, “Time! Next speaker!”
-The affair moved with the speed of a herd of buffalo thundering across the plains.
-Spectators stood for an hour and a half to watch the performance.
-The speakers were a cross section of life: several sales representatives, a chain store
-executive, a baker, the president of a trade association, two bankers, an insurance
-agent, an accountant, a dentist, an architect, a druggist who had come from
-Indianapolis to New York to take the course, a lawyer who had come from Havana
-in order to prepare himself to give one important three-minute speech.
-The first speaker bore the Gaelic name Patrick J. O'Haire. Born in Ireland, he
-attended school for only four years, drifted to America, worked as a mechanic, then
-as a chauffeur.
-Now, however, he was forty, he had a growing family and needed more money, so
-he tried selling trucks. Suffering from an inferiority complex that, as he put it, was
-eating his heart out, he had to walk up and down in front of an office half a dozen
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-times before he could summon up enough courage to open the door. He was so
-discouraged as a salesman that he was thinking of going back to working with his
-hands in a machine shop, when one day he received a letter inviting him to an
-organization meeting of the Dale Carnegie Course in Effective Speaking.
-He didn’t want to attend. He feared he would have to associate with a lot of college
-graduates, that he would be out of place.
-His despairing wife insisted that he go, saying, “It may do you some good, Pat. God
-knows you need it.” He went down to the place where the meeting was to be held
-and stood on the sidewalk for five minutes before he could generate enough selfconfidence to enter the
-room.
-The first few times he tried to speak in front of the others, he was dizzy with fear.
-But as the weeks drifted by, he lost all fear of audiences and soon found that he
-loved to talk - the bigger the crowd, the better. And he also lost his fear of
-individuals and of his superiors. He presented his ideas to them, and soon he had
-been advanced into the sales department. He had become a valued and much liked
-member of his company. This night, in the Hotel Pennsylvania, Patrick O'Haire
-stood in front of twenty-five hundred people and told a gay, rollicking story of his
-achievements. Wave after wave of laughter swept over the audience. Few
-professional speakers could have equaled his performance.
-The next speaker, Godfrey Meyer, was a gray-headed banker, the father of eleven
-children. The first time he had attempted to speak in class, he was literally struck
-dumb. His mind refused to function. His story is a vivid illustration of how
-leadership gravitates to the person who can talk.
-He worked on Wall Street, and for twenty-five years he had been living in Clifton,
-New Jersey. During that time, he had taken no active part in community affairs and
-knew perhaps five hundred people.
-Shortly after he had enrolled in the Carnegie course, he received his tax bill and was
-infuriated by what he considered unjust charges. Ordinarily, he would have sat at
-home and fumed, or he would have taken it out in grousing to his neighbors. But
-instead, he put on his hat that night, walked into the town meeting, and blew off
-steam in public.
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-As a result of that talk of indignation, the citizens of Clifton, New Jersey, urged him
-to run for the town council. So for weeks he went from one meeting to another,
-denouncing waste and municipal extravagance.
-There were ninety-six candidates in the field. When the ballots were counted, lo,
-Godfrey Meyer’s name led all the rest. Almost overnight, he had become a public
-figure among the forty thousand people in his community. As a result of his talks,
-he made eighty times more friends in six weeks than he had been able to previously
-in twenty-five years.
-And his salary as councilman meant that he got a return of 1,000 percent a year on
-his investment in the Carnegie course.
-The third speaker, the head of a large national association of food manufacturers,
-told how he had been unable to stand up and express his ideas at meetings of a
-board of directors.
-As a result of learning to think on his feet, two astonishing things happened. He was
-soon made president of his association, and in that capacity, he was obliged to
-address meetings all over the United States. Excerpts from his talks were put on the
-Associated Press wires and printed in newspapers and trade magazines throughout
-the country.
-In two years, after learning to speak more effectively, he received more free
-publicity for his company and its products than he had been able to get previously
-with a quarter of a million dollars spent in direct advertising. This speaker admitted
-that he had formerly hesitated to telephone some of the more important business
-executives in Manhattan and invite them to lunch with him. But as a result of the
-prestige he had acquired by his talks, these same people telephoned him and invited
-him to lunch and apologized to him for encroaching on his time.
-The ability to speak is a shortcut to distinction. It puts a person in the limelight,
-raises one head and shoulders above the crowd. And the person who can speak
-acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he or
-she really possesses.
-A movement for adult education has been sweeping over the nation; and the most
-spectacular force in that movement was Dale Carnegie, a man who listened to and
-critiqued more talks by adults than has any other man in captivity. According to a
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-cartoon by "Believe-It-or- Not” Ripley, he had criticized 150,000 speeches. If that
-grand total doesn’t impress you, remember that it meant one talk for almost every
-day that has passed since Columbus discovered America. Or, to put it in other
-words, if all the people who had spoken before him had used only three minutes and
-had appeared before him in succession, it would have taken ten months, listening
-day and night, to hear them all.
-Dale Carnegie’s own career, filled with sharp contrasts, was a striking example of
-what a person can accomplish when obsessed with an original idea and afire with
-enthusiasm.
-Born on a Missouri farm ten miles from a railway, he never saw a streetcar until he
-was twelve years old; yet by the time he was forty-six, he was familiar with the farflung corners of the earth, everywhere from Hong Kong to Hammerfest; and, at one
-time, he approached closer to the North Pole than Admiral Byrd’s headquarters at
-Little America was to the South Pole.
-This Missouri lad who had once picked strawberries and cut cockleburs for five
-cents an hour became the highly paid trainer of the executives of large corporations
-in the art of self-expression.
-This erstwhile cowboy who had once punched cattle and branded calves and ridden
-fences out in western South Dakota later went to London to put on shows under the
-patronage of the royal family.
-This chap who was a total failure the first half-dozen times he tried to speak in
-public later became my personal manager. Much of my success has been due to
-training under Dale Carnegie.
-Young Carnegie had to struggle for an education, for hard luck was always
-battering away at the old farm in northwest Missouri with a flying tackle and a body
-slam. Year after year, the “102” River rose and drowned the corn and swept away
-the hay. Season after season, the fat hogs sickened and died from cholera, the
-bottom fell out of the market for cattle and mules, and the bank threatened to
-foreclose the mortgage.
-Sick with discouragement, the family sold out and bought another farm near the
-State Teachers’ College at Warrensburg, Missouri. Board and room could be had in
-town for a dollar a day, but young Carnegie couldn’t afford it. So he stayed on the
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-farm and commuted on horseback three miles to college each day. At home, he
-milked the cows, cut the wood, fed the hogs, and studied his Latin verbs by the light
-of a coal-oil lamp until his eyes blurred and he began to nod.
-Even when he got to bed at midnight, he set the alarm for three o’clock. His father
-bred pedigreed Duroc-Jersey hogs - and there was danger, during the bitter cold
-nights, that the young pigs would freeze to death; so they were put in a basket,
-covered with a gunny sack, and set behind the kitchen stove. True to their nature,
-the pigs demanded a hot meal at 3 A.M. So when the alarm went off, Dale Carnegie
-crawled out of the blankets, took the basket of pigs out to their mother, waited for
-them to nurse, and then brought them back to the warmth of the kitchen stove.
-There were six hundred students in State Teachers’ College, and Dale Carnegie was
-one of the isolated half-dozen who couldn’t afford to board in town. He was
-ashamed of the poverty that made it necessary for him to ride back to the farm and
-milk the cows every night. He was ashamed of his coat, which was too tight, and his
-trousers, which were too short. Rapidly developing an inferiority complex, he
-looked about for some shortcut to distinction. He soon saw that there were certain
-groups in college that enjoyed influence and prestige - the football and baseball
-players and the chaps who won the debating and public-speaking contests.
-Realizing that he had no flair for athletics, he decided to win one of the speaking
-contests. He spent months preparing his talks. He practiced as he sat in the saddle
-galloping to college and back; he practiced his speeches as he milked the cows; and
-then he mounted a bale of hay in the barn and with great gusto and gestures
-harangued the frightened pigeons about the issues of the day.
-But in spite of all his earnestness and preparation, he met with defeat after defeat.
-He was eighteen at the time - sensitive and proud. He became so discouraged, so
-depressed, that he even thought of suicide. And then suddenly he began to win, not
-one contest, but every speaking contest in college.
-Other students pleaded with him to train them; and they won also.
-After graduating from college, he started selling correspondence courses to the
-ranchers among the sand hills of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. In spite
-of all his boundless energy and enthusiasm, he couldn’t make the grade. He became
-so discouraged that he went to his hotel room in Alliance, Nebraska, in the middle
-of the day, threw himself across the bed, and wept in despair. He longed to go back
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-to college, he longed to retreat from the harsh battle of life; but he couldn’t. So he
-resolved to go to Omaha and get another job. He didn’t have the money for a
-railroad ticket, so he traveled on a freight train, feeding and watering two carloads
-of wild horses in return for his passage, After landing in south Omaha, he got a job
-selling bacon and soap and lard for Armour and Company. His territory was up
-among the Badlands and the cow and Indian country of western South Dakota. He
-covered his territory by freight train and stage coach and horseback and slept in
-pioneer hotels where the only partition between the rooms was a sheet of muslin.
-He studied books on salesmanship, rode bucking bronchos, played poker with the
-Indians, and learned how to collect money. And when, for example, an inland
-storekeeper couldn’t pay cash for the bacon and hams he had ordered, Dale
-Carnegie would take a dozen pairs of shoes off his shelf, sell the shoes to the
-railroad men, and forward the receipts to Armour and Company.
-He would often ride a freight train a hundred miles a day. When the train stopped to
-unload freight, he would dash uptown, see three or four merchants, get his orders;
-and when the whistle blew, he would dash down the street again lickety-split and
-swing onto the train while it was moving.
-Within two years, he had taken an unproductive territory that had stood in the
-twenty-fifth place and had boosted it to first place among all the twenty-nine car
-routes leading out of south Omaha. Armour and Company offered to promote him,
-saying: “You have achieved what seemed impossible.” But he refused the
-promotion and resigned, went to New York, studied at the American Academy of
-Dramatic Arts, and toured the country, playing the role of Dr. Hartley in Polly of
-the Circus.
-He would never be a Booth or a Barrymore. He had the good sense to recognize
-that, So back he went to sales work, selling automobiles and trucks for the Packard
-Motor Car Company.
-He knew nothing about machinery and cared nothing about it. Dreadfully unhappy,
-he had to scourge himself to his task each day. He longed to have time to study, to
-write the books he had dreamed about writing back in college. So he resigned. He
-was going to spend his days writing stories and novels and support himself by
-teaching in a night school.
-Teaching what? As he looked back and evaluated his college work, he saw that his
-training in public speaking had done more to give him confidence, courage, poise
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-and the ability to meet and deal with people in business than had all the rest of his
-college courses put together, so he urged the Y.M.C.A. schools in New York to give
-him a chance to conduct courses in public speaking for people in business.
-What? Make orators out of business people? Absurd. The Y.M.C.A. people knew.
-They had tried such courses - and they had always failed. When they refused to pay
-him a salary of two dollars a night, he agreed to teach on a commission basis and
-take a percentage of the net profits - if there were any profits to take. And inside of
-three years they were paying him thirty dollars a night on that basis - instead of two.
-The course grew. Other "Ys" heard of it, then other cities. Dale Carnegie soon
-became a glorified circuit rider covering New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and
-later London and Paris. All the textbooks were too academic and impractical for the
-business people who flocked to his courses. Because of this he wrote his own book
-entitled Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business. It became the official
-text of all the Y.M.C.A.s as well as of the American Bankers’ Association and the
-National Credit Men’s Association.
-Dale Carnegie claimed that all people can talk when they get mad. He said that if
-you hit the most ignorant man in town on the jaw and knock him down, he would
-get on his feet and talk with an eloquence, heat and emphasis that would have
-rivaled that world famous orator William Jennings Bryan at the height of his career.
-He claimed that almost any person can speak acceptably in public if he or she has
-self-confidence and an idea that is boiling and stewing within.
-The way to develop self-confidence, he said, is to do the thing you fear to do and
-get a record of successful experiences behind you. So he forced each class member
-to talk at every session of the course. The audience is sympathetic. They are all in
-the same boat; and, by constant practice, they develop a courage, confidence and
-enthusiasm that carry over into their private speaking.
-Dale Carnegie would tell you that he made a living all these years, not by teaching
-public speaking - that was incidental. His main job was to help people conquer their
-fears and develop courage.
-He started out at first to conduct merely a course in public speaking, but the
-students who came were business men and women. Many of them hadn’t seen the
-inside of a classroom in thirty years. Most of them were paying their tuition on the
-installment plan. They wanted results and they wanted them quick - results that they
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-could use the next day in business interviews and in speaking before groups.
-So he was forced to be swift and practical. Consequently, he developed a system of
-training that is unique - a striking combination of public speaking, salesmanship,
-human relations and applied psychology.
-A slave to no hard-and-fast rules, he developed a course that is as real as the
-measles and twice as much fun.
-When the classes terminated, the graduates formed clubs of their own and continued
-to meet fortnightly for years afterward. One group of nineteen in Philadelphia met
-twice a month during the winter season for seventeen years. Class members
-frequently travel fifty or a hundred miles to attend classes. One student used to
-commute each week from Chicago to New York. Professor William James of
-Harvard used to say that the average person develops only 10 percent of his latent
-mental ability. Dale Carnegie, by helping business men and women to develop their
-latent possibilities, created one of the most significant movements in adult
-education
-LOWELL THOMAS
-1936
-
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-How This Book Was Written And Why
-by Dale Carnegie
-During the first thirty-five years of the twentieth century, the publishing houses of
-America printed more than a fifth of a million different books. Most of them were
-deadly dull, and many were financial failures. “Many,” did I say? The president of
-one of the largest publishing houses in the world confessed to me that his company,
-after seventy-five years of publishing experience, still lost money on seven out of
-every eight books it published.
-Why, then, did I have the temerity to write another book? And, after I had written it,
-why should you bother to read it?
-Fair questions, both; and I'll try to answer them.
-I have, since 1912, been conducting educational courses for business and
-professional men and women in New York. At first, I conducted courses in public
-speaking only - courses designed to train adults, by actual experience, to think on
-their feet and express their ideas with more clarity, more effectiveness and more
-poise, both in business interviews and before groups.
-But gradually, as the seasons passed, I realized that as sorely as these adults needed
-training in effective speaking, they needed still more training in the fine art of
-getting along with people in everyday business and social contacts.
-I also gradually realized that I was sorely in need of such training myself. As I look
-back across the years, I am appalled at my own frequent lack of finesse and
-understanding. How I wish a book such as this had been placed in my hands twenty
-years ago! What a priceless boon it would have been.
-Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are
-in business. Yes, and that is also true if you are a housewife, architect or engineer.
-Research done a few years ago under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation for
-the Advancement of Teaching uncovered a most important and significant fact - a
-fact later confirmed by additional studies made at the Carnegie Institute of
-Technology. These investigations revealed that even in such technical lines as
-engineering, about 15 percent of one's financial success is due to one’s technical
-knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering-to personality
-and the ability to lead people.
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-For many years, I conducted courses each season at the Engineers’ Club of
-Philadelphia, and also courses for the New York Chapter of the American Institute
-of Electrical Engineers. A total of probably more than fifteen hundred engineers
-have passed through my classes. They came to me because they had finally realized,
-after years of observation and experience, that the highest-paid personnel in
-engineering are frequently not those who know the most about engineering. One
-can for example, hire mere technical ability in engineering, accountancy,
-architecture or any other profession at nominal salaries. But the person who has
-technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to
-arouse enthusiasm among people-that person is headed for higher earning power.
-In the heyday of his activity, John D. Rockefeller said that “the ability to deal with
-people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee.” “And I will pay more for
-that ability,” said John D., “than for any other under the sun.”
-Wouldn’t you suppose that every college in the land would conduct courses to
-develop the highest-priced ability under the sun? But if there is just one practical,
-common-sense course of that kind given for adults in even one college in the land,
-it has escaped my attention up to the present writing.
-The University of Chicago and the United Y.M.C.A. Schools conducted a survey to
-determine what adults want to study.
-That survey cost $25,000 and took two years. The last part of the survey was made
-in Meriden, Connecticut. It had been chosen as a typical American town. Every
-adult in Meriden was interviewed and requested to answer 156 questions—
-questions such as “What is your business or profession? Your education? How do
-you spend your spare time? What is your income? Your hobbies? Your ambitions?
-Your problems? What subjects are you most interested in studying?” And so on.
-That survey revealed that health is the prime interest of adults and that their second
-interest is people; how to understand and get along with people; how to make
-people like you; and how to win others to your way of thinking.
-So the committee conducting this survey resolved to conduct such a course for
-adults in Meriden. They searched diligently for a practical textbook on the subject
-and found-not one. Finally they approached one of the world’s outstanding
-authorities on adult education and asked him if he knew of any book that met the
-needs of this group. “No,” he replied, "I know what those adults want. But the book
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-they need has never been written.”
-I knew from experience that this statement was true, for I myself had been
-searching for years to discover a practical, working handbook on human relations.
-Since no such book existed, I have tried to write one for use in my own courses.
-And here it is. I hope you like it.
-In preparation for this book, I read everything that I could find on the subject—
-everything from newspaper columns, magazine articles, records of the family
-courts, the writings of the old philosophers and the new psychologists. In addition, I
-hired a trained researcher to spend one and a half years in various libraries reading
-everything I had missed, plowing through erudite tomes on psychology, poring over
-hundreds of magazine articles, searching through countless biographies, trying to
-ascertain how the great leaders of all ages had dealt with people. We read their
-biographies, We read the life stories of all great leaders from Julius Caesar to
-Thomas Edison. I recall that we read over one hundred biographies of Theodore
-Roosevelt alone. We were determined to spare no time, no expense, to discover
-every practical idea that anyone had ever used throughout the ages for winning
-friends and influencing people.
-I personally interviewed scores of successful people, some of them world-famousinventors like Marconi and Edison; political leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt and
-James Farley; business leaders like Owen D. Young; movie stars like Clark Gable
-and Mary Pickford; and explorers like Martin Johnson—and tried to discover the
-techniques they used in human relations.
-From all this material, I prepared a short talk. I called it “How to Win Friends and
-Influence People.” I say “short.” It was short in the beginning, but it soon expanded
-to a lecture that consumed one hour and thirty minutes. For years, I gave this talk
-each season to the adults in the Carnegie Institute courses in New York.
-I gave the talk and urged the listeners to go out and test it in their business and
-social contacts, and then come back to class and speak about their experiences and
-the results they had achieved. What an interesting assignment! These men and
-women, hungry for self- improvement, were fascinated by the idea of working in a
-new kind of laboratory - the first and only laboratory of human relationships for
-adults that had ever existed.
-This book wasn’t written in the usual sense of the word. It grew as a child grows. It
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-grew and developed out of that laboratory, out of the experiences of thousands of
-adults.
-Years ago, we started with a set of rules printed on a card no larger than a postcard.
-The next season we printed a larger card, then a leaflet, then a series of booklets,
-each one expanding in size and scope. After fifteen years of experiment and
-research came this book.
-The rules we have set down here are not mere theories or guesswork. They work
-like magic. Incredible as it sounds, I have seen the application of these principles
-literally revolutionize the lives of many people.
-To illustrate: A man with 314 employees joined one of these courses. For years, he
-had driven and criticized and condemned his employees without stint or discretion.
-Kindness, words of appreciation and encouragement were alien to his lips. After
-studying the principles discussed in this book, this employer sharply altered his
-philosophy of life. His organization is now inspired with a new loyalty, a new
-enthusiasm, a new spirit of teamwork. Three hundred and fourteen enemies have
-been turned into 314 friends. As he proudly said in a speech before the class:
-“When I used to walk through my establishment, no one greeted me. My employees
-actually looked the other way when they saw me approaching. But now they are all
-my friends and even the janitor calls me by my first name.”
-This employer gained more profit, more leisure and—what is infinitely more
-important—he found far more happiness in his business and in his home.
-Countless numbers of salespeople have sharply increased their sales by the use of
-these principles. Many have opened up new accounts—accounts that they had
-formerly solicited in vain. Executives have been given increased authority,
-increased pay. One executive reported a large increase in salary because he applied
-these truths. Another, an executive in the Philadelphia Gas Works Company, was
-slated for demotion when he was sixty-five because of his belligerence, because of
-his inability to lead people skillfully. This training not only saved him from the
-demotion but brought him a promotion with increased pay.
-On innumerable occasions, spouses attending the banquet given at the end of the
-course have told me that their homes have been much happier since their husbands
-or wives started this training.
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-People are frequently astonished at the new results they achieve. It all seems like
-magic. In some cases, in their enthusiasm, they have telephoned me at my home on
-Sundays because they couldn’t wait forty-eight hours to report their achievements at
-the regular session of the course.
-One man was so stirred by a talk on these principles that he sat far into the night
-discussing them with other members of the class. At three o’clock in the morning,
-the others went home. But he was so shaken by a realization of his own mistakes, so
-inspired by the vista o a new and richer world opening before him, that he was
-unable to sleep. He didn’t sleep that night or the next day or the next night.
-Who was he? A naive, untrained individual ready to gush over any new theory that
-came along? No, Far from it. He was a sophisticated, blasé dealer in art, very much
-the man about town, who spoke three languages fluently and was a graduate of two
-European universities.
-While writing this chapter, I received a letter from a German of the old school, an
-aristocrat whose forebears had served for generations as professional army officers
-under the Hohenzollerns. His letter, written from a transatlantic steamer, telling
-about the application of these principles, rose almost to a religious fervor.
-Another man, an old New Yorker, a Harvard graduate, a wealthy man, the owner of
-a large carpet factory, declared he had learned more in fourteen weeks through this
-system of training about the fine art of influencing people than he had learned about
-the same subject during his four years in college. Absurd? Laughable? Fantastic? Of
-course, you are privileged to dismiss this statement with whatever adjective you
-wish. I am merely reporting, without comment, a declaration made by a
-conservative and eminently successful Harvard graduate in a public address to
-approximately six hundred people at the Yale Club in New York on the evening of
-Thursday, February 23, 1933.
-“Compared to what we ought to be,” said the famous Professor William James of
-Harvard, “compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are
-making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the
-thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses
-powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use,”
-Those powers which you “habitually fail to use”! The sole purpose of this book is to
-help you discover, develop and profit by those dormant and unused assets.
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-“Education,” said Dr. John G. Hibben, former president of Princeton University, “is
-the ability to meet life’s situations.”
-If by the time you have finished reading the first three chapters of this book—if you
-aren’t then a little better equipped to meet life’s situations, then I shall consider this
-book to be a total failure so far as you are concerned. For “the great aim of
-education,” said Herbert Spencer, “is not knowledge but action.”
-And this is an action book.
-DALE CARNEGIE 1936
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-Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book
-1. If you wish to get the most out of this book, there is one indispensable
-requirement, one essential infinitely more important than any rule or technique.
-Unless you have this one fundamental requisite, a thousand rules on how to study
-will avail little, And if you do have this cardinal endowment, then you can achieve
-wonders without reading any suggestions for getting the most out of a book.
-What is this magic requirement? Just this: a deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorous
-determination to increase your ability to deal with people.
-How can you develop such an urge? By constantly reminding yourself how
-important these principles are to you. Picture to yourself how their mastery will aid
-you in leading a richer, fuller, happier and more fulfilling life. Say to yourself over
-and over: "My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small
-extent upon my skill in dealing with people.”
-2. Read each chapter rapidly at first to get a bird's-eye view of it. You will probably
-be tempted then to rush on to the next one. But don’t—unless you are reading
-merely for entertainment. But if you are reading because you want to increase your
-skill in human relations, then go back and reread each chapter thoroughly. In the
-long run, this will mean saving time and getting results.
-3. Stop frequently in your reading to think over what you are reading. Ask yourself
-just how and when you can apply each suggestion.
-4. Read with a crayon, pencil, pen, magic marker or highlighter in your hand. When
-you come across a suggestion that you feel you can use, draw a line beside it. If it is
-a four-star suggestion, then underscore every sentence or highlight it, or mark it
-with ���****.” Marking and underscoring a book makes it more interesting, and far
-easier to review rapidly.
-5. I knew a woman who had been office manager for a large insurance concern for
-fifteen years. Every month, she read all the insurance contracts her company had
-issued that month. Yes, she read many of the same contracts over month after
-month, year after year. Why? Because experience had taught her that that was the
-only way she could keep their provisions clearly in mind.
-I once spent almost two years writing a book on public speaking and yet I found I
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