How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

“Once I did bad and that I heard ever. Twice I did good, but that I heard never.”

“Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.”

When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 per cent of our time thinking about ourselves. Now, if we stop thinking about ourselves for a while and begin to think of the other person’s good points, we won’t have to resort to flattery so cheap and false that it can be spotted almost before it is out of the mouth.

Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.

So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it. Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get somebody to do something. If, for example, you don’t want your children to smoke, don’t preach at them, and don’t talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes may keep them from making the basketball team or winning the hundred-yard dash.

“People who can put themselves in the place of other people, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for them.”