How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

These investigations revealed that even in such technical lines as engineering, about 15 per cent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 per cent is due to skill in human engineering – to personality and the ability to lead people.

“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.”

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.

“Compared to what we ought to be,” said the famous Professor William James of Harvard, “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.”

“Education” said Dr. John G. Hibben, former president of Princeton University, “is the ability to meet life’s situations.”

a deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination to increase your ability to deal with people.

“My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people,”

“If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.”

“Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one – one that would do nobody any harm.”

“I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own

limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.”

Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.

The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned.

So when you and I are tempted to criticize someone tomorrow, let’s remember Al Capone, “Two Gun” Crowley and Albert Fall. Let’s realize that criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home. Let’s realize that the person we are going to correct and condemn will probably justify himself or herself, and condemn us in return; or, like the gentle Taft, will say: “I don’t see how I could have done any differently from what I have.”

That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln’s life. It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art of dealing with people. Never again did he write an insulting letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that time on, he almost never criticized anybody for anything.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

“Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”

Anyhow, it is water under the bridge now. If I send this letter, it will relieve my feelings, but it will make Meade try to justify himself. It will make him condemn me. It will arouse hard feelings, impair all his further usefulness as a commander, and perhaps force him to resign from the army.”

Do you know someone you would like to change and regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in favour of it, but why not begin on yourself? From a purely selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable than trying to improve others – yes, and a lot less dangerous. “Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbour’s roof,” said Confucius, “when your own doorstep is unclean.”

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? “I will speak ill of no man,” he said, “… and speak all the good I know of everybody.”

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

“A great man shows his greatness,” said Carlyle, “by the way he...

Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said, “To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow:”

“Before you criticize them, read one of the classics of American journalism, ‘Father Forgets.’” It originally appeared as an editorial in the People’s Home Journal. We are reprinting it here with the author’s permission, as condensed in the Reader’s Digest.

What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of you. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds

sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To know all is to forgive all.”

“God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days....

Don’t criticize, condemn of complain.

The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.

Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great.

Dr. Dewey said that the deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important.” Remember that phrase: “the desire to be important.” It is significant, You are going to hear a lot about it in this book.

1. Health and the preservation of life 2. Food 3. Sleep

4. Money and the things money will buy 5. Life in the hereafter 6. Sexual gratification 7. The well-being of our children 8. A feeling of importance

It is what Freud calls “the desire to be great.” It is what Dewey calls the “desire to be important.”

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”

He said the “craving” to be appreciated.

The hogs didn’t care about the ribbons they had won. But Father did. These prizes gave him a feeling of importance.

It was this desire for a feeling of importance that led an uneducated, poverty-stricken grocery clerk to study some law books he found in the bottom of a barrel of household plunder that he had bought for fifty cents. You have probably heard of this grocery clerk. His name was Lincoln.

It was this desire for a feeling of importance that inspired Dickens to write his immortal novels. This desire inspired Sir Christoper Wren to design his symphonies in stone. This desire made Rockefeller amass millions that he never spent! And this same desire made the richest family in your town build a house far too large for its requirements.

The average young criminal, according to E. P. Mulrooney, one-time police commissioner of New York, is filled with ego, and his first request after arrest is for those lurid newspapers that make him out a hero.

For example, John D. Rockefeller got his feeling of importance by giving money to erect a modern hospital in Peking, China, to care for millions of poor people whom he had never seen and never would see.

Yes, the one significant difference between Dillinger and Rockefeller is how they got their feeling of importance.

Nobody knows for sure but he did say that many people who go insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that they were unable to achieve in the world of reality.

Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is his secret set down in his own words – words that ought to be cast in eternal bronze and hung in every home and school, every shop and office in the land – words that children ought to memorize instead of wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of Latin verbs or the amount of the annual rainfall in Brazil – words that will all but transform your life and mine if we will only live them:

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, “the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.

“There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never ...