the Homeopathic Hospital, the Friendly Home,
the Children’s Hospital. Mr. Adamson congratulated
him warmly on the idealistic way he was using his
wealth to alleviate the sufferings of humanity. Presently,
George Eastman unlocked a glass case and pulled out
the first camera he had ever owned – an invention he
had bought from an Englishman.
Adamson questioned him at length about his early
struggles to get started in business, and Mr. Eastman
spoke with real feeling about the poverty of his childhood,
telling how his widowed mother had kept a boardinghouse
while he clerked in an insurance office. The
terror of poverty haunted him day and night, and he
resolved to make enough money so that his mother
wouldn’t have to work, Mr. Adamson drew him out with
further questions and listened, absorbed, while he related
the story of his experiments with dry photographic
plates. He told how he had worked in an office all day,
and sometimes experimented all night, taking only brief
naps while the chemicals were working, sometimes
working and sleeping in his clothes for seventy-two
hours at a stretch.
James Adamson had been ushered into Eastman’s office
at ten-fifteen and had been warned that he must not
take more than five minutes; but an hour had passed,
then two hours passed. And they were still talking.
Finally, George Eastman turned to Adamson and said,
“The last time I was in Japan I bought some chairs,
brought them home, and put them in my sun porch. But
the sun peeled the paint, so I went downtown the other
day and bought some paint and painted the chairs myself.
Would you like to see what sort of a job I can do
painting chairs? All right. Come up to my home and have
lunch with me and I’ll show you.”
After lunch, Mr. Eastman showed Adamson the chairs
he had brought from Japan. They weren’t worth more
than a few dollars, but George Eastman, now a multimillionaire,
was proud of them because he himself had
painted them.
The order for the seats amounted to $90,000. Who do
you suppose got the order – James Adamson or one of
his competitors?
From the time of this story until Mr. Eastman’s death,
he and James Adamson were close friends.
Claude Marais, a restaurant owner in Rouen, France,
used this principle and saved his restaurant the loss of a
key employee. This woman had been in his employ for
five years and was a vital link between M. Marais and
his staff of twenty-one people. He was shocked to receive
a registered letter from her advising him of her
resignation.
M. Marais reported: “I was very surprised and, even
more, disappointed, because I was under the impression
that I had been fair to her and receptive to her needs.
Inasmuch as she was a friend as well as an employee, I
probably had taken her too much for granted and maybe
was even more demanding of her than of other employees.
“I could not, of course, accept this resignation without
some explanation. I took her aside and said, ‘Paulette,
you must understand that I cannot accept your resignation
You mean a great deal to me and to this company,
and you are as important to the success of this restaurant
as I am.’ I repeated this in front of the entire staff, and I
invited her to my home and reiterated my confidence in
her with my family present.
“Paulette withdrew her resignation, and today I can
rely on her as never before. I frequently reinforce this
by expressing my appreciation for what she does and
showing her how important she is to me and to the restaurant.”
“Talk to people about themselves,” said Disraeli, one
of the shrewdest men who ever ruled the British Empire.
“Talk to people about themselves and they will
listen for hours .”
PRINCIPLE 6
Make the other person feel important-and
do it sincerely.
In a Nutshell
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 listener. Encourage others to talk about
themselves.
PRINCIPLE 5
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
PRINCIPLE 6
Make the other person feel important-and do it sincerely.
Part THREE
How to Win People to Your
Way of Thinking
1
YOU CAN’T WIN AN ARGUMENT
Shortly after the close of World War I, I learned an invaluable
lesson one night in London. I was manager at
the time for Sir Ross Smith. During the war, Sir Ross had
been the Australian ace out in Palestine; and shortly
after peace was declared, he astonished the world by
flying halfway around it in thirty days. No such feat had
ever been attempted before. It created a tremendous
sensation. The Australian government awarded him fifty
thousand dollars; the King of England knighted him;
and, for a while, he was the most talked-about man
under the Union Jack. I was attending a banquet one
night given in Sir Ross’s honor; and during the dinner,
the man sitting next to me told a humorous story which
hinged on the quotation “There’s a divinity that shapes
our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”
The raconteur mentioned that the quotation was from
the Bible. He was wrong. I knew that, I knew it positively.
There couldn’t be the slightest doubt about it.
And so, to get a feeling of importance and display my
superiority, I appointed myself as an unsolicited and unwelcome
committee of one to correct him. He stuck to
his guns. What? From Shakespeare? Impossible! Absurd! That quotation was from the Bible. And he knew it.
The storyteller was sitting on my right; and Frank
Gammond, an old friend of mine, was seated at my left.
Mr. Gammond had devoted years to the study of Shakespeare,
So the storyteller and I agreed to submit the
question to Mr. Gammond. Mr. Gammond listened,
kicked me under the table, and then said: “Dale, you are
wrong. The gentleman is right. It is from the Bible.”
On our way home that night, I said to Mr. Gammond:
“Frank, you knew that quotation was from Shakespeare,”
“Yes, of course,” he replied, “Hamlet, Act Five, Scene
Two. But we were guests at a festive occasion, my dear
Dale. Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to
make him like you? Why not let him save his face? He
didn’t ask for your opinion. He didn’t want it. Why argue
with him? Always avoid the acute angle.” The man who
said that taught me a lesson I’ll never forget. I not
only had made the storyteller uncomfortable, but had
put my friend in an embarrassing situation. How much
better it would have been had I not become argumentative.
It was a sorely needed lesson because I had been an
inveterate arguer. During my youth, I had argued with
my brother about everything under the Milky Way.
When I went to college, I studied logic and argumentation
and went in for debating contests. Talk about being
from Missouri, I was born there. I had to be shown.
Later, I taught debating and argumentation in New
York; and once, I am ashamed to admit, I planned to
write a book on the subject. Since then, I have listened
to, engaged in, and watched the effect of thousands of
arguments. As a result of all this, I have come to the
conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven
to get the best of an argument – and that is to avoid it .
Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes.
Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of
the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he
is absolutely right.
You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you
lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why?
Well, suppose you triumph over the other man and shoot
his argument full of holes and prove that he is non compos
mentis. Then what? You will feel fine. But what
about him? You have made him feel inferior. You have
hurt his pride. He will resent your triumph. And –
A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.
Years ago Patrick J. O’Haire joined one of my classes.
He had had little education, and how he loved a scrap!
He had once been a chauffeur, and he came to me because
he had been trying, without much success, to sell
trucks. A little questioning brought out the fact that he
was continually scrapping with and antagonizing the
very people he was trying to do business with, If a prospect
said anything derogatory about the trucks he was
selling, Pat saw red and was right at the customer’s
throat. Pat won a lot of arguments in those days. As he
said to me afterward, “I often walked out of an office
saving: ‘I told that bird something.’ Sure I had told him
something, but I hadn’t sold him anything.”
Mv first problem was not to teach Patrick J. O’Haire to
talk. My immediate task was to train him to refrain from
talking and to avoid verbal fights.
Mr. O’Haire became one of the star salesmen for the
White Motor Company in New York. How did he do it?
Here is his story in his own words: “If I walk into a
buyer’s office now and he says: ‘What? A White truck?
They’re no good! I wouldn’t take one if you gave it to
me. I’m going to buy the Whose-It truck,’ I say, ‘The
Whose-It is a good truck. If you buy the Whose-It, you’ll
never make a mistake. The Whose-Its are made by a fine
company and sold by good people.’
“He is speechless then. There is no room for an argument.
If he says the Whose-It is best and I say sure it is,
he has to stop. He can’t keep on all afternoon saying,
‘It’s the best’ when I’m agreeing with him. We then get
off the subject of Whose-It and I begin to talk about the
good points of the White truck.
“There was a time when a remark like his first one
would have made me see scarlet and red and orange. I
would start arguing against the Whose-It; and the more
I argued against it, the more my prospect argued in favor
of it; and the more he argued, the more he sold himself
on my competitor’s product.
“As I look back now I wonder how I was ever able to
sell anything. I lost years of my life in scrapping and
arguing. I keep my mouth shut now. It pays.”
As wise old Ben Franklin used to say:
If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve
a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because
you will never get your opponent’s good will.
So figure it out for yourself. Which would you rather
have, an academic, theatrical victory or a person’s good
will? You can seldom have both.
The Boston Transcript once printed this bit of significant
doggerel:
Here lies the body of William Jay, .
Who died maintaining his right of way-
He was right, dead right, as he sped along,
But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.
You may be right, dead right, as you speed along in
your argument; but as far as changing another’s mind is
concerned, you will probably be just as futile as if you
were wrong.
Frederick S. Parsons, an income tax consultant, had
been disputing and wrangling for an hour with a gover-ment
tax inspector. An item of nine thousand dollars was
at stake. Mr. Parsons claimed that this nine thousand
dollars was in reality a bad debt, that it would never be
collected, that it ought not to be taxed. “Bad debt, my
eye !” retorted the inspector. “It must be taxed.”
“This inspector was cold, arrogant and stubborn,” Mr.
Parsons said as he told the story to the class. “Reason
was wasted and so were facts. . . The longer we argued,
the more stubborn he became. So I decided to avoid
argument, change the subject, and give him appreciation.
“I said, ‘I suppose this is a very petty matter in comparison
with the really important and difficult decisions
you’re required to make. I’ve made a study of taxation
myself. But I’ve had to get my knowledge from books.
You are getting yours from the firing line of experience.
I sometime wish I had a job like yours. It would teach
me a lot.’ I meant every word I said.
“Well.” The inspector straightened up in his chair,
leaned back, and talked for a long time about his work,
telling me of the clever frauds he had uncovered. His
tone gradually became friendly, and presently he was
telling me about his children. As he left, he advised me
that he would consider my problem further and give me
his decision in a few days.
“He called at my office three days later and informed
me that he had decided to leave the tax return exactly as
it was filed.”
This tax inspector was demonstrating one of the most
common of human frailties. He wanted a feeling of importance; and as long as Mr. Parsons argued with him,
he got his feeling of importance by loudly asserting his
authority. But as soon as his importance was admitted
and the argument stopped and he was permitted to expand
his ego, he became a sympathetic and kindly
human being.
Buddha said: “Hatred is never ended by hatred but by
love,” and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument
but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic
desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
Lincoln once reprimanded a young army officer for
indulging in a violent controversy with an associate. “No
man who is resolved to make the most of himself,” said
Lincoln, “can spare time for personal contention. Still
less can he afford to take the consequences, including
the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self-control.
Yield larger things to which you show no more than
equal rights; and yield lesser ones though clearly your
own. Better give your path to a dog than be bitten by
him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog
would not cure the bite.”
In an article in Bits and Pieces,* some suggestions are
made on how to keep a disagreement from becoming an
argument:
Welcome the disagreement. Remember the slogan, “When
two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.” If
there is some point you haven’t thought about, be thankful
if it is brought to your attention. Perhaps this disagreement
is your opportunity to be corrected before you make a serious
mistake.