How to win friends and influence people
Dale Carnegie
Nine suggestions on how to get the most of this book
- Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of human relations.
- Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one.
- As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply each suggestion.
- Underscore each important idea.
- Review this book each month.
- Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a working handbook to help you solve your daily problems.
- 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.
- 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.
- Keep notes in the back of this book showing how and when you have applied these principles.
Part One: Fundamental techniques in handling people
Principle 1: Don't criticize, condemn or complain
Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation
Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want
Part Two: Six ways to make people like you
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 lister. Encolurage others to talk about themselves
Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person's interest
Principle 6: Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely
Part Three: How to win people your way of thinking
Principle 1: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it
Principle 2: Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
Principle 3: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically
Principle 4: Begin in a friendly way
Principle 5: Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately
Principle 6: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking
Principle 7: Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers
Principle 8: Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view
Principle 9: Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires
Principle 10: Appeal to be nobler motives
Principle 11: Dramatize your ideas
Principle 12: Throw down a challenge
Part Four: Be a leader: how to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment
Principle 1: Begin with praise and honest appreciation
Principle 2: Call atention to people's mistakes indirectly
Principle 3: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person
Principle 4: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
Principle 5: Let the other person save face
Principle 6: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise"
Principle 7: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
Principle 8: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
Principle 9: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest