Read How to Win Friends and Influence People for Free Online
Authors: Dale Carnegie
I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I
will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a
boy - a little boy!”
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see
you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that
you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s
arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much,
too much.
Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand
them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do.
That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism;
and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To
know all is to forgive all.”
As Dr. Johnson said: “God himself, sir, does not propose
to judge man until the end of his days.”
Why should you and I?
PRINCIPLE 1
Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
THE BIG SECRET OF DEALING WITH
PEOPLE
There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody
to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes,
just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
Remember, there is no other way.
Of course, you can make someone want to give you his
watch by sticking a revolver in his ribs. YOU can make
your employees give you cooperation - until your back
is turned - by threatening to fire them. You can make a
child do what you want it to do by a whip or a threat. But
these crude methods have sharply undesirable repercussions.
The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving
you what you want.
What do you want?
Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do
springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to
be great.
John Dewey, one of America’s most profound philosophers,
phrased it a bit differently. Dr. Dewey said that
the deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be
important." Remember that phrase: “the desire to be
important." It is significant. You are going to hear a lot
about it in this book.
What do you want? Not many things, but the few
that you do wish, you crave with an insistence
that will not be denied. Some of the things most people
want include:
1. Health and the preservation of life.
2. Food.
3. Sleep.
4. Money and the things money will buy.
5. Life in the hereafter.
6. Sexual gratification.
7. The well-being of our children.
8. A feeling of importance.
Almost all these wants are usually gratified-all except
one. But there is one longing - almost as deep, almost
as imperious, as the desire for food or sleep - which
is seldom gratified. It is what Freud calls “the
desire to be great.” It is what Dewey calls the “desire to
be important.”
Lincoln once began a letter saying: “Everybody likes
a compliment.” William James said: "The deepest principle
in human nature is the craving to be appreciated."
He didn’t speak, mind you, of the “wish” or the “desire”
or the “longing” to be appreciated. He said the "craving”
to be appreciated.
Here is a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and
the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger
will hold people in the palm of his or her hand and
“even the undertaker will be sorry when he dies.”
The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the
chief distinguishing differences between mankind and
the animals. To illustrate: When I was a farm boy out in
Missouri, my father bred fine Duroc-Jersey hogs and .
pedigreed white - faced cattle. We used to exhibit our
hogs and white-faced cattle at the country fairs and live-stock
shows throughout the Middle West. We won first
prizes by the score. My father pinned his blue ribbons
on a sheet of white muslin, and when friends or visitors
came to the house, he would get out the long sheet of
muslin. He would hold one end and I would hold the
other while he exhibited the blue ribbons.
The hogs didn’t care about the ribbons they had won.
But Father did. These prizes gave him a feeling of importance.
If our
will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a
boy - a little boy!”
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see
you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that
you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s
arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much,
too much.
Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand
them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do.
That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism;
and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To
know all is to forgive all.”
As Dr. Johnson said: “God himself, sir, does not propose
to judge man until the end of his days.”
Why should you and I?
PRINCIPLE 1
Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.
THE BIG SECRET OF DEALING WITH
PEOPLE
There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody
to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes,
just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
Remember, there is no other way.
Of course, you can make someone want to give you his
watch by sticking a revolver in his ribs. YOU can make
your employees give you cooperation - until your back
is turned - by threatening to fire them. You can make a
child do what you want it to do by a whip or a threat. But
these crude methods have sharply undesirable repercussions.
The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving
you what you want.
What do you want?
Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do
springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to
be great.
John Dewey, one of America’s most profound philosophers,
phrased it a bit differently. Dr. Dewey said that
the deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be
important." Remember that phrase: “the desire to be
important." It is significant. You are going to hear a lot
about it in this book.
What do you want? Not many things, but the few
that you do wish, you crave with an insistence
that will not be denied. Some of the things most people
want include:
1. Health and the preservation of life.
2. Food.
3. Sleep.
4. Money and the things money will buy.
5. Life in the hereafter.
6. Sexual gratification.
7. The well-being of our children.
8. A feeling of importance.
Almost all these wants are usually gratified-all except
one. But there is one longing - almost as deep, almost
as imperious, as the desire for food or sleep - which
is seldom gratified. It is what Freud calls “the
desire to be great.” It is what Dewey calls the “desire to
be important.”
Lincoln once began a letter saying: “Everybody likes
a compliment.” William James said: "The deepest principle
in human nature is the craving to be appreciated."
He didn’t speak, mind you, of the “wish” or the “desire”
or the “longing” to be appreciated. He said the "craving”
to be appreciated.
Here is a gnawing and unfaltering human hunger, and
the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger
will hold people in the palm of his or her hand and
“even the undertaker will be sorry when he dies.”
The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the
chief distinguishing differences between mankind and
the animals. To illustrate: When I was a farm boy out in
Missouri, my father bred fine Duroc-Jersey hogs and .
pedigreed white - faced cattle. We used to exhibit our
hogs and white-faced cattle at the country fairs and live-stock
shows throughout the Middle West. We won first
prizes by the score. My father pinned his blue ribbons
on a sheet of white muslin, and when friends or visitors
came to the house, he would get out the long sheet of
muslin. He would hold one end and I would hold the
other while he exhibited the blue ribbons.
The hogs didn’t care about the ribbons they had won.
But Father did. These prizes gave him a feeling of importance.
If our
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