Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)

43 Sourced Quotes

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If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive.

Dale Carnegie
Be honest, Look for areas where you can admit error and say so. Apologize for your mistakes. It will help disarm your opponents and reduce defensiveness.

Dale Carnegie
If we merely try to impress people and get people interested in us, we will never have many true, sincere friends. Friends, real friends, are not made that way.

Dale Carnegie
One can win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them.

Dale Carnegie
If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle across the decades and endure until death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism - no matter how certain we are that it is justified.

Dale Carnegie
Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise.

Dale Carnegie
If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can't radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to screw something out of the other person in return—if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.

Dale Carnegie
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.

Dale Carnegie
Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.

Dale Carnegie
Let us praise even the slightest improvement. That inspires the other person to keep on improving.

Dale Carnegie
I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn't think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?"
Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?

Dale Carnegie
You can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry

Dale Carnegie
No one likes to feel that he or she is being sold some-thing or told to do a thing. We much prefer to feel that we are buying of our own accord or acting on our own ideas. We like to be consulted about our wishes, our wants, our thoughts.

Dale Carnegie
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.

Dale Carnegie
If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don't wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.

Dale Carnegie
Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people that he was made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? "I will speak ill of no man," he said, "... and speak all the good I know of everybody." Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. "A great man shows his greatness," says Carlyle, "by the way he treats little men."

Dale Carnegie
Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers. Try to build bridges of understanding.

Dale Carnegie
Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.

Dale Carnegie
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.

Dale Carnegie
Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes- and most fools do- but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one's mistakes.

Dale Carnegie
Let's cease thinking of our accomplishments, our wants. Let's try to figure out the other man's good points. Then forget flattery. Give honest, sincere appreciation. Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise, and people will cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them over a lifetime - repeat them years after you have forgotten them.

Dale Carnegie
Don't you have much more faith in ideas that you discover for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter?

Dale Carnegie
Everybody in the world is seeking happiness - and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.

Dale Carnegie
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.

Dale Carnegie
The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener— a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.

Dale Carnegie
It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you're doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It's what you think of it. Two people may in the same place doing the same thing, and yet one may be miserable and the other happy. Why? Because of a different mental attitude.

Dale Carnegie
You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It's easy

Dale Carnegie
When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he confessed that if he could be right 75 percent of the time, he would reach the highest measure of his expectation.... If that was the highest rating that one of the most distinguished men of the twentieth century could hope to obtain, what about you and me?

Dale Carnegie
Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.

Dale Carnegie
Act as if you were already happy and that will tend to make you happy.

Dale Carnegie