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 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 team-
work. 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.
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 of 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,
“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
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.