How to Win Friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my a...

That is what Schwab did. But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing. As the old couplet says: “Once I did bad and t...

“I have yet to find the person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.”

That he said, frankly, was one of the outstanding reasons for the phenomenal success of Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie praised his associates publicly as well as privately.

“Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself.”

he congratulated Bedford because he had been able to save 60 per cent of the money he had invested. “That’s splendid,” said Rockefeller. “We don’t always do as well as that upstairs.”

“lack of appreciation.”

We often take our spouses so much for granted that we never let them know we appreciate them.

“The next morning I got up very early and called the florist and had them send six red roses to my wife with a note saying: ‘I can’t think of six things I would like to change about you. I love you the way you are.’

“When I arrived at home that evening, who do you think greeted me at the door? That’s right. My wife! She was almost in tears. Needless to say, I was extremely glad I had not criticized her as she had requested.

“The following Sunday at church, after she had reported the results of her assignment, several women with whom she had been studying came up to me and said, ‘That was the most considerate thing I have ever he...

Yet I know, as you know, people who would think they had committed a crime if they let their families or employees go

for six days without food; but they will let them go for six days, and six weeks, and sometimes sixty years without giving them the hearty appreciation that they crave almost as much as they crave food.

“There is nothing I need so much as nourishment for my self-esteem.”

We nourish the bodies of our children and friends and employees, but how seldom do we nourish their self-esteem? We provide them with roast beef and potatoes to build energy, but we neglect to give them kind words of appreciation that would sing in their memories for years like the music of the morning stars.

Paul Harvey, in one of his radio broadcasts, “The Rest of the Story,” told how showing sincere appreciation can change a person’s life. He reported that years ago a teacher in Detroit asked Ste...

the classroom. You see, she appreciated the fact that nature had given Stevie something no one else in the room had. Nature had given Stevie a remarkable pair of ears to compensate for his blind eyes. But this was really the first time Stevie had been shown appreciation for those talented ears. Now, years later, he says that this act of appreciation was the beginning of a new life. You see, from that time on he developed his gift of hearing and went...

flattery

shallow, selfish and insincere.

True, some people are so hungry, so thirsty, for appreciation that they will swallow anything, just as a starving m...

“spread it on with a trowel.”

In the long run, flattery will do you more harm than good. Flattery is counterfeit, and like counterfeit money, it will eventually get you into trouble if you pass it to someone else.

The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.

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

I am talking about a new way of life.

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.

One of the most neglected virtues of our daily existence is appreciation. Somehow, we neglect to praise our son or daughter when he or she brings home a good report card, and we fail to encourage our children when they first succeed in baking a cake or building a birdhouse. Nothing pleases children more than this kind of parental interest and approval.

The next time you enjoy filet mignon at the club, send word to the chef that it was excellently prepared, and when a tired salesperson shows ...

Every minister, lecturer and public speaker knows the discouragement of pouring himself or...

and not receiving a single ripple of appreciative comment. What applies to professionals applies doubly to workers in offices, shops and factories and our families and friends. In our interpersonal relations we should never forget that all our associates are human beings a...

She noticed that occasionally he did a particularly good piece of work. She made a point to praise him for it in front of

the other people. Each day the job he did all around got better, and pretty soon he started doing all his work efficiently. Now he does an excellent job and other people give him appreciation and recognition. Honest appreciation got results where criticism and ridicule failed.

“I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

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

Give honest, sincere appreciation. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise,” and people will cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them over a lifetime – repeat them years after you have forgotten them.

Give honest and sincere appreciation.

Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?

So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

but show them that cigarettes may keep them from making the basketball team or winning the hundred-yard dash.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

How about

the time you gave a large contribution to the Red Cross? Yes, that is no exception to the rule. You gave the Red Cross the donation because you wanted to lend a helping hand; you wanted to do a beautiful, unselfish, divine act. “In as much as ye have done it ...

said: “Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire and the best piece of advice which can be given to would-be persuaders, whether in business, in the home, in the school, in politics, is: First, arouse in the other person an eager

want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

Andrew Carnegie, the poverty-stricken Scotch lad who started to work at two cents an hour and finally gave away $365 million, learned early in life that the only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants. He atte...

Tomorrow you may want to persuade somebody to do something. Before you speak, pause and ask yourself: “How can I make this person want to do it?”

Mind you, I got this reduction without saying a word about what I wanted. I talked all the time about what the other person wanted and how he could get it.

“If there is any one secret of

success,” said Henry Ford, “it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

Mrs. Anderson did not state what she wanted, but wrote in the letter how she could help them, and focused on their wants, not her own.