How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

“People who smile,” he said, “tend to manage, teach and sell more effectively, and to raise happier children.

The effect of a smile is powerful – even when it is unseen.

you smile when talking on the phone. Your “smile” comes through in your voice.

people rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it.

“I have known people,” he said, “who succeeded because they had a rip-roaring good time conducting their business. Later, I saw those people change as the fun became work. The business had grown dull. They lost all joy in it, and they failed.”

You must have a good time meeting people if you expect them to have a good time meeting you.

I treat those who come to me with complaints or grievances in a cheerful manner. I smile as I listen to them and I find that adjustments are accomplished much easier. I find that smiles are bringing me dollars, many dollars every day.

I have stopped talking about what I want. I am now trying to see the other person’s viewpoint. And these things have literally revolutionized my life. I am a totally different man, a happier man, a richer man, richer in friendships and happiness – the only things that matter much after all.”

You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Two things. First, force yourself to smile. If you are alone, force yourself to whistle or hum a tune or sing. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.

“Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. “Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there… .”

Every body in the world is seeking happiness – and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.

“A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.”

Your smile is a messenger of your good will. Your smile brightens the lives of all who see it. To someone who has seen a dozen people frown, scowl or turn their faces away, your smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds. Especially when that someone is under pressure from his bosses, his customers, his teachers or parents or children, a smile can help him realize that all is not hopeless – that there is joy in the world.

PRINCIPLE 2 Smile.

Jim Farley discovered early in life that the average person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together. Remember that name and call it easily, and you have paid a subtle and very effective compliment. But forget it or misspell it – and you have placed yourself at a sharp disadvantage.

This policy of remembering and honouring the names of his friends and business associates was one of the secrets of Andrew Carnegie’s leadership.

the bigger a corporation gets, the colder it becomes. “One way to warm it up,” he said, “is to remember people’s names. The executive who tells me he can’t remember names is at the same time telling me he can’t remember a significant part of his business and is operating on quicksand.”

People are so proud of their names that they strive to perpetuate them at any cost.

Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that one of the simplest, most obvious and most important ways of gaining good will was by remembering names and making people feel important – yet how many of us do it?

The importance of remembering and using names is not just the prerogative of kings and corporate executives. It works for all of us.

We should be aware of the magic contained in a name and realize that this single item is wholly and completely owned by the person with whom we are dealing and nobody else.

The name sets the individual apart; it makes him or her unique among all others. The information we are imparting or the request we are making takes on a special importance when we approach the situation with the name of the individual. From the waitress to the senior executive, the name will work magic as we deal with others.

PRINCIPLE 3 Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most import...

I had listened because I was genuinely interested. And he felt it. Naturally that pleased him. That kind of listening is one of the highest compliments we can pay anyone. “Few human beings,” wrote Jack Woodford in Strangers in Love, “few human beings are proof against the implied flattery of rapt attention.” I went even further than giving him rapt attention. I was “hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”

Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, “There is no mystery about successful business intercourse… . Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you is very important. Nothing else is so flattering as that.”

Listening is just as important in one’s home life as in the world of business.

Robert said: “Mom, I know that you love me very much.” Mrs. Esposito was touched and said: “Of course I love you very much. Did you doubt it?” Robert responded: “No, but I really know you love me because whenever I want to talk to you about something you stop whatever you are doing and listen to me.”

The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener – a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.

many people fail to make a favourable impression because they don’t listen attentively. “They have been so much concerned with what they are going to say next that they do not keep their ears open. Very important people have told me that they prefer good listeners to good talkers, but the ability to listen seems rarer than almost any other good trait.”

If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe; Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence. Do you know people like that? I do, unfortunately; and the astonishing part of it is that some of them are prominent. Bores, that is all they are – bores intoxicated with their own egos, drunk with a sense of their own importance.

People who talk only of themselves think only of themselves. And “those people who think only of themselves,” Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, longtime president of Columbia University, said, “are hopelessly uneducated. They are not educated,” said Dr. Butler, “no matter how instructed they may be.”

So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to...

Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems. A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people. A boil on one’s neck interests one more than f...

PRINCIPLE 4 Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk...

Whenever Roosevelt expected a visitor, he sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew his guest was particularly interested. For Roosevelt knew, as all leaders know, that the royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most.

Talking in terms of the other person’s interests pays off for both parties.

PRINCIPLE 5 Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can’t radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to get something out of the other person in return – if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.

Always make the other person feel important. John Dewey, as we have already noted, said that the desire to be important is the deepest urge in human nature; and William James said: “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” As I have already pointed out, it is this urge that differentiates us from the animals. It is this urge that has been responsible for civilization itself.

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

“hearty in their approbation and lavish in their praise.” All of us want that.

All the time, everywhere.

You don’t have to wait until you are ambassador to France or chairman of the Clambake Committee of your lodge before you use this philosophy of appreciation. You can work magic with it almost every day.

for example, the waitress brings us mashed potatoes when we have ordered French fries, let’s say: “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I prefer French fries.” She’ll probably reply, “No trouble at all” and will be glad to change the potatoes, because we have shown respect for her. Little phrases such as “I’m sorry to trouble you,” “Would you be so kind as to——?” “Won’t you please?” “Would you mind?” “Thank you” – little courtesies like these oil the cogs of the monotonous grind of everyday life – and, incidentally, they are the hallmark of good breeding.

The life of many a person could probably be changed if only someone would make him feel important.

The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realize in some subtle way that you recognize their importance, and recognize it sincerely.

Remember what Emerson said: “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.”

And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tum...

PRINCIPLE 6 Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

PRINCIPLE 1 Become genuinely interested in other people. PRINCIPLE 2 Smile. PRINCIPLE 3 Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. PRINCIPLE 4 Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. PRINCIPLE 5 Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. PRINCIPLE 6 Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.