The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking

by Dale Carnegie

“The ability to communicate effectively with others and win their co-operation is an asset we look for in men moving to the top.”

“In almost any subject, your passion for the subject will save you. If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. If you wish to be good, you will be good. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich. If you wish to be learned, you will be learned. Only then you must really wish these things and wish them with exclusiveness and not wish one hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

Try your best to develop an ability to let others look into your head and heart. Learn to make your thoughts, your ideas, clear to others, individually, in groups, in public. You will find, as you improve in your effort to do this, that you—your real self—are making an impression, an impact, on people such as you never made before.

The second guidepost, then, is to picture yourself as successfully doing what now you fear to do, and to concentrate on the benefits you will receive through your ability to talk acceptably before groups. Remember the words of William James: “If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.”

“The biggest lesson I have ever learned is the stupendous importance of what we think. If I knew what you think, I would know what you are, for your thoughts make you what you are. By changing our thoughts, we can change our lives.”

The will to succeed must be a vital part of the process of becoming an effective speaker.

So, to succeed in this work, you need the qualities that are essential in any worthwhile endeavor: desire amounting to enthusiasm, persistence to wear away mountains, and the self-assurance to believe you will succeed.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”

only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

Never memorize word for word:

Assemble and Arrange Your Ideas Beforehand:

Lose Yourself in Your Subject:

How do you fan the fires of faith in your message? By exploring all phases of your subject, grasping its deeper meanings, and asking yourself how your talk will help the audience to be better people for having listened to you.

Draw yourself up to your full height and look your audience straight in the eyes, and begin to talk as confidently as if every one of them owed you money. Imagine that they do. Imagine that they have assembled there to beg you for an extension of credit. The psychological effect on you will be beneficial.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speak About Something You Have Earned the Right to Talk About Through Experience or Study

Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.

Speak on what life has taught you and I will be your devoted listener.

Contrast this mechanistic approach to speech training with the three primary rules I have been discussing in this chapter. They are the basis of my entire approach to training in effective speaking. You will come across them again and again in this book. A speaker should approach his preparation not by what he wants to say, but by what he wants to learn. – Todd Stocker * * * For

manner is quite as important as matter.

“It has been proved that the deepest yearning of the human heart is for recognition—for honor!”

I Wanted To Be Somebody.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind. – Dale Carnegie

“The art of war is a science in which nothing succeeds which has not been calculated and thought out.”

Curiosity! Who is not susceptible to it?

“I was a prisoner for ten years. Not in an ordinary prison, but in one whose walls were worry about my inferiority and whose bars were the fear of criticism.”

If you want to interest your listeners, don’t begin with an introduction. Begin by leaping right into the heart of your story.

A prosperous economy has to keep moving forward or it goes into a tailspin. There is a parallel with the airplane, which is a useless collection of nuts and bolts standing still on the ground. When moving forward in the air, however, it comes into its own and serves as a useful function. To stay up, it has to keep going forward. If it doesn’t move, it sinks—and it can’t move backward.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”

Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can, with perfect certainty, count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out.

It is easily in your power to do this. Believe that you will succeed. Believe it firmly, and you will then do what is necessary to bring success about.

Emerson wrote, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

Mark Twain had this to say about such memorization: “Written things are not for speech; their form is literary; they are stiff, inflexible, and will not lend themselves to happy effective delivery with the tongue. Where their purpose is merely to entertain, not to instruct, they have to be limbered up, broken up, colloquialized, and turned into the common form of unpremeditated talk; otherwise they will bore the house—not entertain it.”

Charles F. Kettering, whose inventive genius sparked the growth of General Motors, was one of America’s most renowned and heartwarming speakers. Asked if he ever wrote out any part or all of his talks, he replied: “What I have to say is, I believe, far too important to write down on paper. I prefer to write on my audience’s mind, on their emotions, with every ounce of my being. A piece of paper cannot stand between me and those I want to impress.”

How can we acquire this most important technique of using illustrative material? There are five ways of doing this: Humanize, Personalize, Specify, Dramatize, and Visualize.

So I halted this class, and said something like this: “We don’t want to be lectured to. No one enjoys that. Remember, you must be entertaining or we will pay no attention whatever to what you are saying. Also remember that one of the most interesting things in the world is sublimated, glorified gossip. So tell us the stories of two men you have known. Tell why one succeeded and why the other failed. We will gladly listen to that, remember it, and possibly profit by it.”

As Rudolf Flesch points out, “Nothing adds more realism to a story than names; nothing is as unrealistic as anonymity. Imagine a story whose hero has no name.”

“If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is on this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers—Homer, Dante, Shakespeare—are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their words call up pictures.” This is as true of speaking as of writing.

If you can’t write your message in a sentence, you can’t say it in an hour. – Dianna Booher

Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said. – Dale Carnegie

Choose Subjects You Are Earnest About

Relive the Feelings You Have About Your Topic

One of the reasons why we go to plays and movies is that we want to hear and see emotions expressed. We have become so fearful of giving vent to our feelings in public that we have to go to a play to satisfy this need for emotional expression.

Act in Earnest

William James: “Act in earnest and you will become naturally earnest in all you do.”

Above all, remember this: acting in earnest will make you feel earnest.

If you don’t know what you want to achieve in your presentation your audience nev...

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave. —Dale Carnegie

Would you believe it? There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.