6. Handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant. 7. Become a better speaker, a more entertaining conversationalist. 8. Arouse enthusiasm among your associates. This book has done all these things for more than fifteen million readers in thirty- six languages. TABLE OF CONTENTS A Biographical Sketch of Dale Carnegie........................................................................... 5 How This Book Was Written And Why........................................................................... 15 Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book............................................ 21 PART ONE: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People ............................................ 25 1 - IF YOU WANT TO GATHER HONEY, DON’T KICK OVER THE BEEHIVE..... 25 2 - THE BIG SECRET OF DEALING WITH PEOPLE.................................................. 37 3 - HE WHO CAN DO THIS HAS THE WHOLE WORLD WITH HIM...................... 48 PART TWO: Ways to Make People Like You ............................................................... 65 1 - DO THIS AND YOU’LL BE WELCOME ANYWHERE......................................... 65 2 - A SIMPLE WAY TO MAKE A GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION............................... 75 3 - IF YOU DON’T DO THIS, YOU ARE HEADED FOR TROUBLE......................... 82 4 - AN EASY WAY TO BECOME A GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST..................... 89 5 - HOW TO INTEREST PEOPLE................................................................................ 97 6 - HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU INSTANTLY............................................. 101 PART THREE: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking ....................................... 112 1 - YOU CAN’T WIN AN ARGUMENT...................................................................... 112 2 - A SURE WAY OF MAKING ENEMIES—AND HOW TO AVOID IT................... 118 3 - IF YOU’RE WRONG, ADMIT IT............................................................................ 127 4 - A DROP OF HONEY............................................................................................... 134 5 - THE SECRET OF SOCRATES................................................................................ 141 6 - THE SAFETY VALVE IN HANDLING COMPLAINTS......................................... 146 7 - HOW TO GET COOPERATION............................................................................. 150 8 - A FORMULA THAT WILL WORK WONDERS FOR YOU.................................. 155 9 - WHAT EVERYBODY WANTS.............................................................................. 159
3
10 - AN APPEAL THAT EVERYBODY LIKES........................................................... 166 11 - THE MOVIES DO IT. TV DOES IT....WHY DON’T YOU DO IT?...................... 171 12 - WHEN NOTHING ELSE WORKS, TRY THIS..................................................... 175 PART FOUR: How to Change People Without Giving Offense ..................................... 179 1 - IF YOU MUST FIND FAULT, THIS IS THE WAY TO BEGIN............................. 179 2 - HOW TO CRITICIZE....AND NOT BE HATED FOR IT........................................ 184 3 - TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN MISTAKES FIRST................................................... 187 4 - NO ONE LIKES TO TAKE ORDERS..................................................................... 191 5 - LET THE OTHER PERSON SAVE FACE............................................................... 193 6 - HOW TO SPUR PEOPLE ON TO SUCCESS......................................................... 196 7 - GIVE A DOG A GOOD NAME............................................................................... 200 8 - MAKE THE FAULT SEEM EASY TO CORRECT.................................................. 204 9 - MAKING PEOPLE GLAD TO DO WHAT YOU WANT....................................... 208
4
A Shortcut to Distinction - A Biographical Sketch of Dale Carnegie by Lowell Thomas It was a cold January night in 1935, but the weather couldn’t keep them away. Two thousand five hundred men and women thronged into the grand ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. Every available seat was filled by half-past seven. At eight o’clock, the eager crowd was still pouring in. The spacious balcony was soon jammed. Presently even standing space was at a premium, and hundreds of people, tired after navigating a day in business, stood up for an hour and a half that night to witness - what? A fashion show? A six-day bicycle race or a personal appearance by Clark Gable? No. These people had been lured there by a newspaper ad. Two evenings previously, they had seen this full-page announcement in the New York Sun staring them in the face: Learn to Speak Effectively Prepare for Leadership Old stuff? Yes, but believe it or not, in the most sophisticated town on earth, during a depression with 20 percent of the population on relief, twenty-five hundred people had left their homes and hustled to the hotel in response to that ad. The people who responded were of the upper economic strata - executives, employers and professionals. These men and women had come to hear the opening gun of an ultramodern, ultrapractical course in “Effective Speaking and Influencing Men in Business”- a course given by the Dale Carnegie Institute of Effective Speaking and Human Relations. Why were they there, these twenty-five hundred business men and women? Because of a sudden hunger for more education because of the depression?
5
Apparently not, for this same course had been playing to packed houses in New York City every season for the preceding twenty-four years. During that time, more than fifteen thousand business and professional people had been trained by Dale Carnegie. Even large, skeptical, conservative organizations such as the Westinghouse Electric Company, the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, the Brooklyn Union Gas Company, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the New York Telephone Company have had this training conducted in their own offices for the benefit of their members and executives. The fact that these people, ten or twenty years after leaving grade school, high school or college, come and take this training is a glaring commentary on the shocking deficiencies of our educational system. What do adults really want to study? That is an important question; and in order to answer it, the University of Chicago, the American Association for Adult Education, and the United Y.M.C.A. Schools made a survey over a two-year period. That survey revealed that the prime interest of adults is health. It also revealed that their second interest is in developing skill in human relationships - they want to learn the technique of getting along with and influencing other people. They don’t want to become public speakers, and they don’t want to listen to a lot of high sounding talk about psychology; they want suggestions they can use immediately in business, in social contacts and in the home. So that was what adults wanted to study, was it? “All right,” said the people making the survey. "Fine. If that is what they want, we’ll give it to them.” Looking around for a textbook, they discovered that no working manual had ever been written to help people solve their daily problems in human relationships. Here was a fine kettle of fish! For hundreds of years, learned volumes had been written on Greek and Latin and higher mathematics - topics about which the average adult doesn’t give two hoots. But on the one subject on which he has a thirst for knowledge, a veritable passion for guidance and help - nothing! This explained the presence of twenty-five hundred eager adults crowding into the
6
grand ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania in response to a newspaper advertisement. Here, apparently, at last was the thing for which they had long been seeking. Back in high school and college, they had pored over books, believing that knowledge alone was the open sesame to financial - and professional rewards. But a few years in the rough-and-tumble of business and professional life had brought sharp disillusionment. They had seen some of the most important business successes won by men who possessed, in addition to their knowledge, the ability to talk well, to win people to their way of thinking, and to "sell" themselves and their ideas. They soon discovered that if one aspired to wear the captain’s cap and navigate the ship of business, personality and the ability to talk are more important than a knowledge of Latin verbs or a sheepskin from Harvard. The advertisement in the New York Sun promised that the meeting would be highly entertaining. It was. Eighteen people who had taken the course were marshaled in front of the loudspeaker - and fifteen of them were given precisely seventy-five seconds each to tell his or her story. Only seventy-five seconds of talk, then “bang” went the gavel, and the chairman shouted, “Time! Next speaker!” The affair moved with the speed of a herd of buffalo thundering across the plains. Spectators stood for an hour and a half to watch the performance. The speakers were a cross section of life: several sales representatives, a chain store executive, a baker, the president of a trade association, two bankers, an insurance agent, an accountant, a dentist, an architect, a druggist who had come from Indianapolis to New York to take the course, a lawyer who had come from Havana in order to prepare himself to give one important three-minute speech. The first speaker bore the Gaelic name Patrick J. O'Haire. Born in Ireland, he attended school for only four years, drifted to America, worked as a mechanic, then as a chauffeur. Now, however, he was forty, he had a growing family and needed more money, so he tried selling trucks. Suffering from an inferiority complex that, as he put it, was eating his heart out, he had to walk up and down in front of an office half a dozen
7
times before he could summon up enough courage to open the door. He was so discouraged as a salesman that he was thinking of going back to working with his hands in a machine shop, when one day he received a letter inviting him to an organization meeting of the Dale Carnegie Course in Effective Speaking. He didn’t want to attend. He feared he would have to associate with a lot of college graduates, that he would be out of place. His despairing wife insisted that he go, saying, “It may do you some good, Pat. God knows you need it.” He went down to the place where the meeting was to be held and stood on the sidewalk for five minutes before he could generate enough self- confidence to enter the room. The first few times he tried to speak in front of the others, he was dizzy with fear. But as the weeks drifted by, he lost all fear of audiences and soon found that he loved to talk - the bigger the crowd, the better. And he also lost his fear of individuals and of his superiors. He presented his ideas to them, and soon he had been advanced into the sales department. He had become a valued and much liked member of his company. This night, in the Hotel Pennsylvania, Patrick O'Haire stood in front of twenty-five hundred people and told a gay, rollicking story of his achievements. Wave after wave of laughter swept over the audience. Few professional speakers could have equaled his performance. The next speaker, Godfrey Meyer, was a gray-headed banker, the father of eleven children. The first time he had attempted to speak in class, he was literally struck dumb. His mind refused to function. His story is a vivid illustration of how leadership gravitates to the person who can talk. He worked on Wall Street, and for twenty-five years he had been living in Clifton, New Jersey. During that time, he had taken no active part in community affairs and knew perhaps five hundred people. Shortly after he had enrolled in the Carnegie course, he received his tax bill and was infuriated by what he considered unjust charges. Ordinarily, he would have sat at home and fumed, or he would have taken it out in grousing to his neighbors. But instead, he put on his hat that night, walked into the town meeting, and blew off steam in public.
8
As a result of that talk of indignation, the citizens of Clifton, New Jersey, urged him to run for the town council. So for weeks he went from one meeting to another, denouncing waste and municipal extravagance. There were ninety-six candidates in the field. When the ballots were counted, lo, Godfrey Meyer’s name led all the rest. Almost overnight, he had become a public figure among the forty thousand people in his community. As a result of his talks, he made eighty times more friends in six weeks than he had been able to previously in twenty-five years. And his salary as councilman meant that he got a return of 1,000 percent a year on his investment in the Carnegie course. The third speaker, the head of a large national association of food manufacturers, told how he had been unable to stand up and express his ideas at meetings of a board of directors. As a result of learning to think on his feet, two astonishing things happened. He was soon made president of his association, and in that capacity, he was obliged to address meetings all over the United States. Excerpts from his talks were put on the Associated Press wires and printed in newspapers and trade magazines throughout the country. In two years, after learning to speak more effectively, he received more free publicity for his company and its products than he had been able to get previously with a quarter of a million dollars spent in direct advertising. This speaker admitted that he had formerly hesitated to telephone some of the more important business executives in Manhattan and invite them to lunch with him. But as a result of the prestige he had acquired by his talks, these same people telephoned him and invited him to lunch and apologized to him for encroaching on his time. The ability to speak is a shortcut to distinction. It puts a person in the limelight, raises one head and shoulders above the crowd. And the person who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he or she really possesses. A movement for adult education has been sweeping over the nation; and the most spectacular force in that movement was Dale Carnegie, a man who listened to and critiqued more talks by adults than has any other man in captivity. According to a
9
cartoon by "Believe-It-or- Not” Ripley, he had criticized 150,000 speeches. If that grand total doesn’t impress you, remember that it meant one talk for almost every day that has passed since Columbus discovered America. Or, to put it in other words, if all the people who had spoken before him had used only three minutes and had appeared before him in succession, it would have taken ten months, listening day and night, to hear them all. Dale Carnegie’s own career, filled with sharp contrasts, was a striking example of what a person can accomplish when obsessed with an original idea and afire with enthusiasm. Born on a Missouri farm ten miles from a railway, he never saw a streetcar until he was twelve years old; yet by the time he was forty-six, he was familiar with the far- flung corners of the earth, everywhere from Hong Kong to Hammerfest; and, at one time, he approached closer to the North Pole than Admiral Byrd’s headquarters at Little America was to the South Pole. This Missouri lad who had once picked strawberries and cut cockleburs for five cents an hour became the highly paid trainer of the executives of large corporations in the art of self-expression. This erstwhile cowboy who had once punched cattle and branded calves and ridden fences out in western South Dakota later went to London to put on shows under the patronage of the royal family. This chap who was a total failure the first half-dozen times he tried to speak in public later became my personal manager. Much of my success has been due to training under Dale Carnegie. Young Carnegie had to struggle for an education, for hard luck was always battering away at the old farm in northwest Missouri with a flying tackle and a body slam. Year after year, the “102” River rose and drowned the corn and swept away the hay. Season after season, the fat hogs sickened and died from cholera, the bottom fell out of the market for cattle and mules, and the bank threatened to foreclose the mortgage. Sick with discouragement, the family sold out and bought another farm near the State Teachers’ College at Warrensburg, Missouri. Board and room could be had in town for a dollar a day, but young Carnegie couldn’t afford it. So he stayed on the
10
farm and commuted on horseback three miles to college each day. At home, he milked the cows, cut the wood, fed the hogs, and studied his Latin verbs by the light of a coal-oil lamp until his eyes blurred and he began to nod. Even when he got to bed at midnight, he set the alarm for three o’clock. His father bred pedigreed Duroc-Jersey hogs - and there was danger, during the bitter cold nights, that the young pigs would freeze to death; so they were put in a basket, covered with a gunny sack, and set behind the kitchen stove. True to their nature, the pigs demanded a hot meal at 3 A.M. So when the alarm went off, Dale Carnegie crawled out of the blankets, took the basket of pigs out to their mother, waited for them to nurse, and then brought them back to the warmth of the kitchen stove. There were six hundred students in State Teachers’ College, and Dale Carnegie was one of the isolated half-dozen who couldn’t afford to board in town. He was ashamed of the poverty that made it necessary for him to ride back to the farm and milk the cows every night. He was ashamed of his coat, which was too tight, and his trousers, which were too short. Rapidly developing an inferiority complex, he looked about for some shortcut to distinction. He soon saw that there were certain groups in college that enjoyed influence and prestige - the football and baseball players and the chaps who won the debating and public-speaking contests. Realizing that he had no flair for athletics, he decided to win one of the speaking contests. He spent months preparing his talks. He practiced as he sat in the saddle galloping to college and back; he practiced his speeches as he milked the cows; and then he mounted a bale of hay in the barn and with great gusto and gestures harangued the frightened pigeons about the issues of the day. But in spite of all his earnestness and preparation, he met with defeat after defeat. He was eighteen at the time - sensitive and proud. He became so discouraged, so depressed, that he even thought of suicide. And then suddenly he began to win, not one contest, but every speaking contest in college. Other students pleaded with him to train them; and they won also. After graduating from college, he started selling correspondence courses to the ranchers among the sand hills of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. In spite of all his boundless energy and enthusiasm, he couldn’t make the grade. He became so discouraged that he went to his hotel room in Alliance, Nebraska, in the middle of the day, threw himself across the bed, and wept in despair. He longed to go back
11
to college, he longed to retreat from the harsh battle of life; but he couldn’t. So he resolved to go to Omaha and get another job. He didn’t have the money for a railroad ticket, so he traveled on a freight train, feeding and watering two carloads of wild horses in return for his passage, After landing in south Omaha, he got a job selling bacon and soap and lard for Armour and Company. His territory was up among the Badlands and the cow and Indian country of western South Dakota. He covered his territory by freight train and stage coach and horseback and slept in pioneer hotels where the only partition between the rooms was a sheet of muslin. He studied books on salesmanship, rode bucking bronchos, played poker with the Indians, and learned how to collect money. And when, for example, an inland storekeeper couldn’t pay cash for the bacon and hams he had ordered, Dale Carnegie would take a dozen pairs of shoes off his shelf, sell the shoes to the railroad men, and forward the receipts to Armour and Company. He would often ride a freight train a hundred miles a day. When the train stopped to unload freight, he would dash uptown, see three or four merchants, get his orders; and when the whistle blew, he would dash down the street again lickety-split and swing onto the train while it was moving. Within two years, he had taken an unproductive territory that had stood in the twenty-fifth place and had boosted it to first place among all the twenty-nine car routes leading out of south Omaha. Armour and Company offered to promote him, saying: “You have achieved what seemed impossible.” But he refused the promotion and resigned, went to New York, studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and toured the country, playing the role of Dr. Hartley in Polly of the Circus. He would never be a Booth or a Barrymore. He had the good sense to recognize that, So back he went to sales work, selling automobiles and trucks for the Packard Motor Car Company. He knew nothing about machinery and cared nothing about it. Dreadfully unhappy, he had to scourge himself to his task each day. He longed to have time to study, to write the books he had dreamed about writing back in college. So he resigned. He was going to spend his days writing stories and novels and support himself by teaching in a night school. Teaching what? As he looked back and evaluated his college work, he saw that his training in public speaking had done more to give him confidence, courage, poise
12
and the ability to meet and deal with people in business than had all the rest of his college courses put together, so he urged the Y.M.C.A. schools in New York to give him a chance to conduct courses in public speaking for people in business. What? Make orators out of business people? Absurd. The Y.M.C.A. people knew. They had tried such courses - and they had always failed. When they refused to pay him a salary of two dollars a night, he agreed to teach on a commission basis and take a percentage of the net profits - if there were any profits to take. And inside of three years they were paying him thirty dollars a night on that basis - instead of two. The course grew. Other "Ys" heard of it, then other cities. Dale Carnegie soon became a glorified circuit rider covering New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and later London and Paris. All the textbooks were too academic and impractical for the business people who flocked to his courses. Because of this he wrote his own book entitled Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business. It became the official text of all the Y.M.C.A.s as well as of the American Bankers’ Association and the National Credit Men’s Association. Dale Carnegie claimed that all people can talk when they get mad. He said that if you hit the most ignorant man in town on the jaw and knock him down, he would get on his feet and talk with an eloquence, heat and emphasis that would have rivaled that world famous orator William Jennings Bryan at the height of his career. He claimed that almost any person can speak acceptably in public if he or she has self-confidence and an idea that is boiling and stewing within. The way to develop self-confidence, he said, is to do the thing you fear to do and get a record of successful experiences behind you. So he forced each class member to talk at every session of the course. The audience is sympathetic. They are all in the same boat; and, by constant practice, they develop a courage, confidence and enthusiasm that carry over into their private speaking. Dale Carnegie would tell you that he made a living all these years, not by teaching public speaking - that was incidental. His main job was to help people conquer their fears and develop courage. He started out at first to conduct merely a course in public speaking, but the students who came were business men and women. Many of them hadn’t seen the inside of a classroom in thirty years. Most of them were paying their tuition on the installment plan. They wanted results and they wanted them quick - results that they
13
could use the next day in business interviews and in speaking before groups. So he was forced to be swift and practical. Consequently, he developed a system of training that is unique - a striking combination of public speaking, salesmanship, human relations and applied psychology. A slave to no hard-and-fast rules, he developed a course that is as real as the measles and twice as much fun. When the classes terminated, the graduates formed clubs of their own and continued to meet fortnightly for years afterward. One group of nineteen in Philadelphia met twice a month during the winter season for seventeen years. Class members frequently travel fifty or a hundred miles to attend classes. One student used to commute each week from Chicago to New York. Professor William James of Harvard used to say that the average person develops only 10 percent of his latent mental ability. Dale Carnegie, by helping business men and women to develop their latent possibilities, created one of the most significant movements in adult education LOWELL THOMAS 1936
14
How This Book Was Written And Why by Dale Carnegie
During the first thirty-five years of the twentieth century, the publishing houses of America printed more than a fifth of a million different books. Most of them were deadly dull, and many were financial failures. “Many,” did I say? The president of one of the largest publishing houses in the world confessed to me that his company, after seventy-five years of publishing experience, still lost money on seven out of every eight books it published. Why, then, did I have the temerity to write another book? And, after I had written it, why should you bother to read it? Fair questions, both; and I'll try to answer them. I have, since 1912, been conducting educational courses for business and professional men and women in New York. At first, I conducted courses in public speaking only - courses designed to train adults, by actual experience, to think on their feet and express their ideas with more clarity, more effectiveness and more poise, both in business interviews and before groups. But gradually, as the seasons passed, I realized that as sorely as these adults needed training in effective speaking, they needed still more training in the fine art of getting along with people in everyday business and social contacts. I also gradually realized that I was sorely in need of such training myself. As I look back across the years, I am appalled at my own frequent lack of finesse and understanding. How I wish a book such as this had been placed in my hands twenty years ago! What a priceless boon it would have been. Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business. Yes, and that is also true if you are a housewife, architect or engineer. Research done a few years ago under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching uncovered a most important and significant fact - a fact later confirmed by additional studies made at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. These investigations revealed that even in such technical lines as engineering, about 15 percent of one's financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering-to personality and the ability to lead people.
15
For many years, I conducted courses each season at the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia, and also courses for the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. A total of probably more than fifteen hundred engineers have passed through my classes. They came to me because they had finally realized, after years of observation and experience, that the highest-paid personnel in engineering are frequently not those who know the most about engineering. One can for example, hire mere technical ability in engineering, accountancy, architecture or any other profession at nominal salaries. But the person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people-that person is headed for higher earning power. In the heyday of his activity, John D. Rockefeller said that “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.” Wouldn’t you suppose that every college in the land would conduct courses to develop the highest-priced ability under the sun? But if there is just one practical, common-sense course of that kind given for adults in even one college in the land, it has escaped my attention up to the present writing. The University of Chicago and the United Y.M.C.A. Schools conducted a survey to determine what adults want to study. That survey cost $25,000 and took two years. The last part of the survey was made in Meriden, Connecticut. It had been chosen as a typical American town. Every adult in Meriden was interviewed and requested to answer 156 questions— questions such as “What is your business or profession? Your education? How do you spend your spare time? What is your income? Your hobbies? Your ambitions? Your problems? What subjects are you most interested in studying?” And so on. 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. So the committee conducting this survey resolved to conduct such a course for adults in Meriden. They searched diligently for a practical textbook on the subject and found-not one. Finally they approached one of the world’s outstanding authorities on adult education and asked him if he knew of any book that met the needs of this group. “No,” he replied, "I know what those adults want. But the book
16
they need has never been written.” I knew from experience that this statement was true, for I myself had been searching for years to discover a practical, working handbook on human relations. Since no such book existed, I have tried to write one for use in my own courses. And here it is. I hope you like it. In preparation for this book, I read everything that I could find on the subject— everything from newspaper columns, magazine articles, records of the family courts, the writings of the old philosophers and the new psychologists. In addition, I hired a trained researcher to spend one and a half years in various libraries reading everything I had missed, plowing through erudite tomes on psychology, poring over hundreds of magazine articles, searching through countless biographies, trying to ascertain how the great leaders of all ages had dealt with people. We read their biographies, We read the life stories of all great leaders from Julius Caesar to Thomas Edison. I recall that we read over one hundred biographies of Theodore Roosevelt alone. We were determined to spare no time, no expense, to discover every practical idea that anyone had ever used throughout the ages for winning friends and influencing people. I personally interviewed scores of successful people, some of them world-famous- inventors like Marconi and Edison; political leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt and James Farley; business leaders like Owen D. Young; movie stars like Clark Gable and Mary Pickford; and explorers like Martin Johnson—and tried to discover the techniques they used in human relations. From all this material, I prepared a short talk. I called it “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I say “short.” It was short in the beginning, but it soon expanded to a lecture that consumed one hour and thirty minutes. For years, I gave this talk each season to the adults in the Carnegie Institute courses in New York. I gave the talk and urged the listeners to go out and test it in their business and social contacts, and then come back to class and speak about their experiences and the results they had achieved. What an interesting assignment! These men and women, hungry for self- improvement, were fascinated by the idea of working in a new kind of laboratory - the first and only laboratory of human relationships for adults that had ever existed. This book wasn’t written in the usual sense of the word. It grew as a child grows. It
17
grew and developed out of that laboratory, out of the experiences of thousands of adults. Years ago, we started with a set of rules printed on a card no larger than a postcard. The next season we printed a larger card, then a leaflet, then a series of booklets, each one expanding in size and scope. After fifteen years of experiment and research came this book. The rules we have set down here are not mere theories or guesswork. They work like magic. Incredible as it sounds, I have seen the application of these principles literally revolutionize the lives of many people. To illustrate: A man with 314 employees joined one of these courses. For years, he had driven and criticized and condemned his employees without stint or discretion. Kindness, words of appreciation and encouragement were alien to his lips. After studying the principles discussed in this book, this employer sharply altered his philosophy of life. His organization is now inspired with a new loyalty, a new enthusiasm, a new spirit of teamwork. Three hundred and fourteen enemies have been turned into 314 friends. As he proudly said in a speech before the class: “When I used to walk through my establishment, no one greeted me. My employees actually looked the other way when they saw me approaching. But now they are all my friends and even the janitor calls me by my first name.” This employer gained more profit, more leisure and—what is infinitely more important—he found far more happiness in his business and in his home. Countless numbers of salespeople have sharply increased their sales by the use of these principles. Many have opened up new accounts—accounts that they had formerly solicited in vain. Executives have been given increased authority, increased pay. One executive reported a large increase in salary because he applied these truths. Another, an executive in the Philadelphia Gas Works Company, was slated for demotion when he was sixty-five because of his belligerence, because of his inability to lead people skillfully. This training not only saved him from the demotion but brought him a promotion with increased pay. On innumerable occasions, spouses attending the banquet given at the end of the course have told me that their homes have been much happier since their husbands or wives started this training.
18
People are frequently astonished at the new results they achieve. It all seems like magic. In some cases, in their enthusiasm, they have telephoned me at my home on Sundays because they couldn’t wait forty-eight hours to report their achievements at the regular session of the course. One man was so stirred by a talk on these principles that he sat far into the night discussing them with other members of the class. At three o’clock in the morning, the others went home. But he was so shaken by a realization of his own mistakes, so inspired by the vista o a new and richer world opening before him, that he was unable to sleep. He didn’t sleep that night or the next day or the next night. Who was he? A naive, untrained individual ready to gush over any new theory that came along? No, Far from it. He was a sophisticated, blasé dealer in art, very much the man about town, who spoke three languages fluently and was a graduate of two European universities. While writing this chapter, I received a letter from a German of the old school, an aristocrat whose forebears had served for generations as professional army officers under the Hohenzollerns. His letter, written from a transatlantic steamer, telling about the application of these principles, rose almost to a religious fervor. Another man, an old New Yorker, a Harvard graduate, a wealthy man, the owner of a large carpet factory, declared he had learned more in fourteen weeks through this system of training about the fine art of influencing people than he had learned about the same subject during his four years in college. Absurd? Laughable? Fantastic? Of course, you are privileged to dismiss this statement with whatever adjective you wish. I am merely reporting, without comment, a declaration made by a conservative and eminently successful Harvard graduate in a public address to approximately six hundred people at the Yale Club in New York on the evening of Thursday, February 23, 1933. “Compared to what we ought to be,” said the famous Professor William James of Harvard, “compared to what we ought to be, 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,” Those powers which you “habitually fail to use”! The sole purpose of this book is to help you discover, develop and profit by those dormant and unused assets.
19
“Education,” said Dr. John G. Hibben, former president of Princeton University, “is the ability to meet life’s situations.” If by the time you have finished reading the first three chapters of this book—if you aren’t then a little better equipped to meet life’s situations, then I shall consider this book to be a total failure so far as you are concerned. For “the great aim of education,” said Herbert Spencer, “is not knowledge but action.”
And this is an action book. DALE CARNEGIE 1936
20
Nine Suggestions on How to Get the Most Out of This Book 1. If you wish to get the most out of this book, there is one indispensable requirement, one essential infinitely more important than any rule or technique. Unless you have this one fundamental requisite, a thousand rules on how to study will avail little, And if you do have this cardinal endowment, then you can achieve wonders without reading any suggestions for getting the most out of a book. What is this magic requirement? Just this: a deep, driving desire to learn, a vigorous determination to increase your ability to deal with people. How can you develop such an urge? By constantly reminding yourself how important these principles are to you. Picture to yourself how their mastery will aid you in leading a richer, fuller, happier and more fulfilling life. Say to yourself over and over: "My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people.” 2. Read each chapter rapidly at first to get a bird's-eye view of it. You will probably be tempted then to rush on to the next one. But don’t—unless you are reading merely for entertainment. But if you are reading because you want to increase your skill in human relations, then go back and reread each chapter thoroughly. In the long run, this will mean saving time and getting results. 3. Stop frequently in your reading to think over what you are reading. Ask yourself just how and when you can apply each suggestion. 4. Read with a crayon, pencil, pen, magic marker or highlighter in your hand. When you come across a suggestion that you feel you can use, draw a line beside it. If it is a four-star suggestion, then underscore every sentence or highlight it, or mark it with “****.” Marking and underscoring a book makes it more interesting, and far easier to review rapidly. 5. I knew a woman who had been office manager for a large insurance concern for fifteen years. Every month, she read all the insurance contracts her company had issued that month. Yes, she read many of the same contracts over month after month, year after year. Why? Because experience had taught her that that was the only way she could keep their provisions clearly in mind. I once spent almost two years writing a book on public speaking and yet I found I
21
had to keep going back over it from time to time in order to remember what I had written in my own book. The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing. So, if you want to get a real, lasting benefit out of this book, don’t imagine that skimming through it once will suffice. After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend a few hours reviewing it every month, Keep it on your desk in front of you every day. Glance through it often. Keep constantly impressing yourself with the rich possibilities for improvement that still lie in the offing. Remember that the use of these principles can be made habitual only by a constant and vigorous campaign of review and application. There is no other way. 6. Bernard Shaw once remarked: “If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.” Shaw was right. Learning is an active process. We learn by doing. So, if you desire to master the principles you are studying in this book, do something about them. Apply these rules at every opportunity. If you don’t you will forget them quickly. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind. You will probably find it difficult to apply these suggestions all the time. I know because I wrote the book, and yet frequently I found it difficult to apply everything I advocated. For example, when you are displeased, it is much easier to criticize and condemn than it is to try to understand the other person’s viewpoint. It is frequently easier to find fault than to find praise. It is more natural to talk about what you want than to talk about what the other person wants. And so on, So, as you read this book, remember that you are not merely trying to acquire information. You are attempting to form new habits. Ah yes, you are attempting a new way of life. That will require time and persistence and daily application. So refer to these pages often. Regard this as a working handbook on human relations; and whenever you are confronted with some specific problem—such as handling a child, winning your spouse to your way of thinking, or satisfying an irritated customer—hesitate about doing the natural thing, the impulsive thing. This is usually wrong. Instead, turn to these pages and review the paragraphs you have underscored. Then try these new ways and watch them achieve magic for you. 7. Offer your spouse, your child or some business associate a dime or a dollar every time he or she catches you violating a certain principle. Make a lively game out of mastering these rules. 8. The president of an important Wall Street bank once described, in a talk before
22
one of my classes, a highly efficient system he used for self-improvement. This man had little formal schooling; yet he had become one of the most important financiers in America, and he confessed that he owed most of his success to the constant application of his homemade system. This is what he does, I’ll put it in his own words as accurately as I can remember: “For years I have kept an engagement book showing all the appointments I had during the day. My family never made any plans for me on Saturday night, for the family knew that I devoted a part of each Saturday evening to the illuminating process of self-examination and review and appraisal. After dinner I went off by myself, opened my engagement book, and thought over all the interviews, discussions and meetings that had taken place during the week. I asked myself: ‘What mistakes did I make that time?’ ‘What did I do that was right—and in what way could I have improved my performance?’ ‘What lessons can I learn from that experience?’ “I often found that this weekly review made me very unhappy. I was frequently astonished at my own blunders. Of course, as the years passed, these blunders became less frequent. Sometimes I was inclined to pat myself on the back a little after one of these sessions. This system of self-analysis, self-education, continued year after year, did more for me than any other one thing I have ever attempted. “It helped me improve my ability to make decisions—and it aided me enormously in all my contacts with people. I cannot recommend it too highly.” Why not use a similar system to check up on your application of the principles discussed in this book? If you do, two things will result. First, you will find yourself engaged in an educational process that is both intriguing and priceless. Second, you will find that your ability to meet and deal with people will grow enormously. 9. You will find at the end of this book several blank pages on which you should
23
record your triumphs in the application of these principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a record will inspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be when you chance upon them some evening years from now! In order to get the most out of this book: a. Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of human relations, b. Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one. c. As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply each suggestion. d. Underscore each important idea. e. Review this book each month. f . Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a working handbook to help you solve your daily problems. g. Make a lively game out of your learning by offering some friend a dime or a dollar every time he or she catches you violating one of these principles. h. Check up each week on the progress you are making. Ask yourself what mistakes you have made, what improvement, what lessons you have learned for the future. i. Keep notes in the back of this book showing how and when you have applied these principles.
24
PART O N E Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
1 - “IF YOU WANT TO GATHER HONEY, DON’T KICK OVER THE BEEHIVE” On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New York City had ever known had come to its climax. After weeks of search, “Two Gun” Crowley - the killer, the gunman who didn’t smoke or drink - was at bay, trapped in his sweetheart’s apartment on West End Avenue. One hundred and fifty policemen and detectives laid siege to his top-floor hideway. They chopped holes in the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the “cop killer,” with tear-gas. Then they mounted their machine guns on surrounding buildings, and for more than an hour one of New York’s fine residential areas reverberated with the crack of pistol fire and the rut-tat-tat of machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an over-stuffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand excited people watched the battle. Nothing like it had ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New York. When Crowley was captured, Police Commissioner E. P. Mulrooney declared that the two-gun desperado was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered in the history of New York. “He will kill,” said the Commissioner, “at the drop of a feather.” But how did “Two Gun” Crowley regard himself? We know, because while the police were firing into his apartment, he wrote a letter addressed “To whom it may concern, ” And, as he wrote, the blood flowing from his wounds left a crimson trail on the paper. In this letter Crowley said: “Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do nobody any harm.” A short time before this, Crowley had been having a necking party with his girlfriend on a country road out on Long Island. Suddenly a policeman walked up to the car and said: “Let me see your license.” Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut the policeman down with a shower of lead. As the dying officer fell, Crowley leaped out of the car, grabbed the officer’s revolver, and fired another bullet into the prostrate body. And that was the killer who said: “Under my coat is a
25
weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do nobody any harm.’ Crowley was sentenced to the electric chair. When he arrived at the death house in Sing Sing, did he say, “This is what I get for killing people”? No, he said: “This is what I get for defending myself.” The point of the story is this: “Two Gun” Crowley didn’t blame himself for anything. Is that an unusual attitude among criminals? If you think so, listen to this: “I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.” That’s Al Capone speaking. Yes, America’s most notorious Public Enemy- the most sinister gang leader who ever shot up Chicago. Capone didn’t condemn himself. He actually regarded himself as a public benefactor - an unappreciated and misunderstood public benefactor. And so did Dutch Schultz before he crumpled up under gangster bullets in Newark. Dutch Schultz, one of New York’s most notorious rats, said in a newspaper interview that he was a public benefactor. And he believed it. I have had some interesting correspondence with Lewis Lawes, who was warden of New York’s infamous Sing Sing prison for many years, on this subject, and he declared that “few of the criminals in Sing Sing regard themselves as bad men. They are just as human as you and I. So they rationalize, they explain. They can tell you why they had to crack a safe or be quick on the trigger finger. Most of them attempt by a form of reasoning, fallacious or logical, to justify their antisocial acts even to themselves, consequently stoutly maintaining that they should never have been imprisoned at all.” If Al Capone, “Two Gun” Crowley, Dutch Schultz, and the desperate men and women behind prison walls don’t blame themselves for anything , what about the people with whom you and I come in contact? John Wanamaker, founder of the stores that bear his name, once confessed: “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
26
distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.” Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally had to blunder through this old world for a third of a century before it even began to dawn upon me that ninety- nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it may be. Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes them strive to justify themselves. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts their sense of importance, and arouses resentment. B. F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment. Hans Selye, another great psychologist, said, “As much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation,” The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned. George B. Johnston of Enid, Oklahoma, is the safety coordinator for an engineering company, One of his responsibilities is to see that employees wear their hard hats whenever they are on the job in the field. He reported that whenever he came across workers who were not wearing hard hats, he would tell them with a lot of authority of the regulation and that they must comply. As a result he would get sullen acceptance, and often after he left, the workers would remove the hats. He decided to try a different approach. The next time he found some of the workers not wearing their hard hat, he asked if the hats were uncomfortable or did not fit properly. Then he reminded the men in a pleasant tone of voice that the hat was designed to protect them from injury and suggested that it always be worn on the job. The result was increased compliance with the regulation with no resentment or emotional upset. You will find examples of the futility of criticism bristling on a thousand pages of history, Take, for example, the famous quarrel between Theodore Roosevelt and
27
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108 Page 109 Page 110 Page 111 Page 112 Page 113 Page 114 Page 115 Page 116 Page 117 Page 118 Page 119 Page 120 Page 121 Page 122 Page 123 Page 124 Page 125 Page 126 Page 127 Page 128 Page 129 Page 130 Page 131 Page 132 Page 133 Page 134 Page 135 Page 136 Page 137 Page 138 Page 139 Page 140 Page 141 Page 142 Page 143 Page 144 Page 145 Page 146 Page 147 Page 148 Page 149 Page 150 Page 151 Page 152 Page 153 Page 154 Page 155 Page 156 Page 157 Page 158 Page 159 Page 160 Page 161 Page 162 Page 163 Page 164 Page 165 Page 166 Page 167 Page 168 Page 169 Page 170 Page 171 Page 172 Page 173 Page 174 Page 175 Page 176 Page 177 Page 178 Page 179 Page 180 Page 181 Page 182 Page 183 Page 184 Page 185 Page 186 Page 187 Page 188 Page 189 Page 190 Page 191 Page 192 Page 193 Page 194 Page 195 Page 196 Page 197 Page 198 Page 199 Page 200Powered by FlippingBook