Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People  

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Presented by Donna Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie

EDITORIAL CONSULTANT: Dorothy Carnegie
EDITORIAL ASSISTANCE: Arthur R. Pell, Ph.D.

SIMON & SCHUSTER
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY

Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1936 by Dale Carnegie
Copyright renewed 1964 by Donna Dale Carnegie and Dorothy Carnegie
Revised edition copyright 1981 by Donna Dale Carnegie and Dorothy Carnegie

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

This Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2009

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com

Designed by Level C

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-4391-6734-2
eISBN 978-1-4516-2171-6

This book is dedicated to a man
who doesnt need to read it
my cherished friend
HOMER CROY

Preface
by Dorothy Carnegie

How This Book Was Writtenand Why
by Dale Carnegie

Nine Suggestions on How to Get the
Most Out of This Book

PART ONE
Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

PART TWO
Six Ways to Make People Like You

PART THREE
How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

PART FOUR
Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

A Shortcut to Distinction
by Lowell Thomas

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. How to Win Friends and Influence 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 cartoons 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 ever-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 todays 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 intacteven 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 Influence 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), 1981

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 Ill 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 onlycourses 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.