HOW TO Win Friends AND Influence People
Preface
to Revised Edition
How to Win Friends and Influence People was first published
in 1937 in an edition of only five thousand copies.
Neither Dale Carnegie nor the publishers, Simon and
Schuster, anticipated more than this modest sale. To
their amazement, the book became an overnight sensation,
and edition after edition rolled off the presses to
keep up with the increasing public demand. Now to Win
Friends and InfEuence People took its place in publishing
history as one of the all-time international best-sellers.
It touched a nerve and filled a human need that was
more than a faddish phenomenon of post-Depression
days, as evidenced by its continued and uninterrupted
sales into the eighties, almost half a century later.
Dale Carnegie used to say that it was easier to make a
million dollars than to put a phrase into the English language.
How to Win Friends and Influence People became
such a phrase, quoted, paraphrased, parodied,
used in innumerable contexts from political cartoon to
novels. The book itself was translated into almost every
known written language. Each generation has discovered
it anew and has found it relevant.
Which brings us to the logical question: Why revise a
book that has proven and continues to prove its vigorous
and universal appeal? Why tamper with success?
To answer that, we must realize that Dale Carnegie
himself was a tireless reviser of his own work during his
lifetime. How to Win Friends and Influence People was
written to be used as a textbook for his courses in Effective
Speaking and Human Relations and is still used in
those courses today. Until his death in 1955 he constantly
improved and revised the course itself to make it
applicable to the evolving needs of an every-growing
public. No one was more sensitive to the changing currents
of present-day life than Dale Carnegie. He constantly
improved and refined his methods of teaching;
he updated his book on Effective Speaking several
times. Had he lived longer, he himself would have revised
How to Win Friends and Influence People to better
reflect the changes that have taken place in the world
since the thirties.
Many of the names of prominent people in the book,
well known at the time of first publication, are no longer
recognized by many of today’s readers. Certain examples
and phrases seem as quaint and dated in our social
climate as those in a Victorian novel. The important message
and overall impact of the book is weakened to that
extent.
Our purpose, therefore, in this revision is to clarify
and strengthen the book for a modern reader without
tampering with the content. We have not “changed”
How to Win Friends and Influence People except to
make a few excisions and add a few more contemporary
examples. The brash, breezy Carnegie style is intact-even
the thirties slang is still there. Dale Carnegie wrote
as he spoke, in an intensively exuberant, colloquial,
conversational manner.
So his voice still speaks as forcefully as ever, in the
book and in his work. Thousands of people all over the
world are being trained in Carnegie courses in increasing
numbers each year. And other thousands are reading
and studying How to Win Friends and lnfluence People
and being inspired to use its principles to better their
lives. To all of them, we offer this revision in the spirit
of the honing and polishing of a finely made tool.
Dorothy Carnegie
(Mrs. Dale Carnegie)
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.
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 they need has never been
written.”