Rex didn't Like The Muzzle

Within a minute's walk of my house there was a wild stretch of virgin timber, where the blackberry thickets foamed white in the spring time, where the squirrels nested and reared their young, and the horse weeds grew as tall as a horse's head. This unspoiled woodland was called Forest Park - and it was a forest, probably not much different appearance from what is was taken Columbus discovered America. I frequently walked in this park with Rex, my little Boston bulldog. He was a friendly, harmless little hound; and since we rarely met anyone in the park, I took Rex along without a leash or a muzzle.

One day we encountered a mounted policeman in the park, a policeman itching to show his authority.

"What do you mean by letting that dog run loose in the park without a muzzle and leash?" he reprimanded me. "Don't you know it's against the law?"

"Yes, I know it is," I replied softly, "but I didn't think he would do nay harm out here."

"You didn't think! You didn't think! The law doesn't give a tinker's damn about what you think. That dog might kill a squirrel or bite a child. Now, I'm going to let you off this time; but if I catch this dog out here again without a muzzle and a leash, you'll have to tell it to the judge.

I meekly promised to obey.

And I did obey - for a few times. But Rex didn't like the muzzle, and neither did I; so we decided to take a chance. Everything was lovely for a while, and then we struck a snag. Rex and I raced over the brow of a hill one afternoon and there, suddenly - to my dismay - I saw the majesty of the law, astride a bay horse. Rex was in front, heading straight for the officer.

I was in for it. I knew it. So I didn't wait until the policeman started talking. I beat him to it. I said: "Officer, you've caught me red-handed. I'm guilty. I have no alibis, no excuses. You warned me last week that if I brought the dog out here again without a muzzle you would fine me."

"Well, now," the policeman responded in a soft tone. "I know it's a temptation to let a little dog like that have a run out here when nobody is around."

"Sure it's a temptation," I replied, "but it is against the law."

"Well, a little dog like that isn't going to harm anybody," the policeman remonstrated.

"No, but he may kill squirrels," I said.

"Well now, I think you are taking this a bit too seriously," he told me. "I'll tell you what you do. You just let him run over the hill there where I can't see him - and we'll forget all about it."

That policeman being human, wanted a feeling of importance; so when I began to condemn my self, the only he could nourish his self-esteem was to take the magnanimous attitude of showing mercy. But suppose I had tried to defend my self - well, did you ever argue with a policeman?

But instead of breaking lances with him, I admitted that he was absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong; I admitted it quickly, openly, and with enthusiasm. The affair terminated graciously in my taking his side and his affair terminated graciously in my taking his side and his taking my side. Lord Chesterfield himself could hardly have been more gracious than this mounted policeman who, only a week previously, had threatened to have the law on me.

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

A Sure Way of Making Enemies

When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he confessed that if he could be right 75% 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?

If you can be sure of being right only 55% of the time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day. If you can't be sure of being right even 55% of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong?

You can tell people they are wrong by a look or an intonation or a gesture just as eloquently as you can in words - and if you tell them they are wrong, do you make them agree with you? Never! For you have struck a direct blow at their intelligence, judgment, pride, and self-respect. That will make them want to strike back. But it will never make them want to change their minds. You may then hurl at them all the logic of a Plato or an Immanuel Kant, but you will not alter their opinions, for you have hurt their feelings.

Never begin by announcing "I am going to prove so and-so to you." That's bad. That's tantamount to saying: "I'm smarter than you are. I'm going to tell you a thing or two and make change your mind."

That is a challenge. It arouses opposition and makes the listener want to battle with you before you even start.

It is difficult, under even the most benign conditions, to change people's minds. So why make it harder? Why handicap yourself?

If you going to prove anything, don't let anybody know it. Do it so subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel that you are doing it.

This was expressed by Alexander Pope:

Men must be taught as if you taught them not.

And things unknown proposed as things forgot.

Over three hundred years ago Galileo said:

You cannot teach a man anything;

you can only help him to find it within himself.

As Lord Chesterfield said to his son:

Be wiser that other people if you can,

but do not tell them so.

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

No! You're Wrong!

Shortly after the close of World War 1, 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 governmen award him fifty thousand dollars; the Kind 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' 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 my self as 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 story teller 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 story teller 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 an embarassing situation. How much better it would have been had I not became argumentative.

It was a sorely neede 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 results 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 end 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.

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Sincerely! Without Trying to Get Out of Others

I (Dale Carnegie) was waiting in line to register letter in the post office at Thirty-third Street and Eighth Avenue in New York. I noticed that the clerk appeared to be bored with the job - weighing envelopes, handling out stamps, making change, issuing receipts - the same monotonous grind year after year. So I said to my self: "I am going to try to make that clerk like me. Obviously, to make him like me, I must say something nice, not about my self, but about him. So I asked myself, 'What is there about him that I can honestly admire?'" That is sometimes a hard question to answer, especially with strangers; but in this case, it happened to be easy. I instantly saw something I admired no end.

So while he was weighing my envelope, I remarked with enthusiasm: "I certainly wish I had your head of hair." He looked up, half startled, his face beaming with smiles. "Well, it isn't as good as it used to be," he said modestly. I assured him that although it might have lose some of its pristine glory, nevertheless it was still magnificent. He was immensely pleased. We carried on a pleasant little conversation and the last thing he said to me was: "Many people have admired my hair."

I'll bet that person went out to lunch that day walking on air. I'll bet he went home that night and told his wife about it. I'll bet he looked in the mirror and said: "It is a beautiful head of hair."

I told this story once in public and a man asked me afterwards: "What did you want to get out of him?" What was I trying to get out of him!!! What was I trying to get out of him!!!
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 get something out of the other person in return - if our souls are no bigger that sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.

I did want something out that chap. I wanted something priceless. And I got it. I got the feeling that I had done something for him without his being able to do anything whatever in return for m. That is a feeling that flows and sings in your memory long after the incident is past.

There is one all important law of human conduct. If we obey that law, we shall almost never get into trouble. In fact, that law, if obeyed, will bring us countles friends and constant happiness.

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Make Others Interested to You

Everyone who was ever a guest of Theodore Roosevelt was astonished at the range and diversity of his knowledge. Whether his visitor was a cowboy or a Rough Rider, a New York politician or a diplomat, Roosevelt know what to say. And how was it done? The answer was simple. Whenever Roosevelt expected a visitor, he sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew his guest was particularly interested.

For Roosevelt knew, as all leaders know, that the royal road to a person's heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most.

The genial William Lyon Phelps, essayist and professor of literature at Yale, learned this lesson early in life. "When I was eight years old, and was spending a weekend visiting my Aunt Libby Linsley at her home in Stratford on the Housatonic, " he wrote in his essay on Human Nature, " a middle-aged man called one evening, and after a polite skirmish with my aunt, he devoted his attention to me. At that time, I happened to be excited about boats, and the visitor discussed the subject in a way that seemed to me particularly interesting. After he left, I spoke of him with enthusiasm. What a man! My aunt informed me he was a New York lawyer, that he cared nothing whatever about boats - that he took not the slightest in the subject. 'But why then did he talk all the time about boats?'

"'Because he is a gentleman. He saw you were interested in boats, and he talked about the things he knew would interest and please you. He made himself agreeable.'"

And William Lyon Phelps added: "I never forgot my aunt remark."

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

An Easy Way to be a Conversationalist

I met a distinguished botanist at a dinner party given by a New York book publisher. I had never talked with a botanist before, and I found him fascinating. I literally sat on the edge of my chair and listened while he spoke of exotic plants and experiments in developing new forms of plant life an indoor gardens (and even told me astonishing facts about the humble potato). I had a small indoor garden of my own - and he was good enough to tell me how to solve some of my problems.

As I said, we were at dinner party. There must have been a dozen other guests, but I violated all the cannons of courtesy, ignored everyone else, and talked for hours to the botanist. Midnight came. I said good night to everyone and departed. The botanist then turned to our host and paid me several compliments. I was "most stimulating" "I was this and I was that, and he ended by saying I was a most interesting conversationalist."

An interesting conversationalist? Why, I had said hardly anything at all. I couldn't have said anything if I had wanted to without changing the subject, for I didn't know any more about botany that I knew about the anatomy of a penguin. But I had done this: I had listened intently. I had listened because I was genuinely interested.

Source : How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

He Never Saw The Inside of High School!

Back in 1898, a tragic thing happenedin Rockland County, New York. A child had died, on this particular day the neighbors were preparing to go to the funeral. Jim Farley went out to the barn to hitch up his horse. The ground was covered with snow, the air was cold and snappy; the horse hadn't been exercised for days; and as he was led out to the watering trough, he wheeled playfully, kicked both his heels high in the air, and killed Jim Farley. So the little village of Stony Point, had two funerals that week instead of one.

Jim Farley, left behind hin a widow and three boys, and a few hendred dollars in insurance.

His oldest boy, Jim, was ten, and he went to work in a brickyard, wheeling sand and pouring it into the molds and turning the brick on edge to be dried by the sun. This boy Jim never had a chance to get much education. But with his natural geniality, he had a flair for making people like him, so he went into politics, and as the years went by, he developed an uncanny ability for remembering people's names.

He never saw the inside of a high school; but before he was forty six years of age, four colleges had honored him with degrees and he had become chairman of the Democratic National Committee and Postmaster General of the United States.

I once interviewed Jim Farley and asked him the secret of his success. He said, "Hard work," and I said, "Don't be funny." He then asked me what I thought was the reason for his success. I replied: "I understand you can call ten thousand people by their first names."

"No. You are wrong," he said. "I can call fifty thousand people by their first names."

Make no mistake about it. That ability helped Mr. Farley put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House when he managed Roosevelt's campaign in 1932.

Source : How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

An Expression that Worth a Million Dollars!

At a dinner party in New York, one of the guests, a woman who had inherited money, was eager to make a pleasing impression on everyone. She had squandered a modest fortune on sables, diamonds, and pearls. But she hadn't done anything whatever about her face. It radiated sourness and selfishness. She didn't realize what everyone knows: namely, that the expression one wears on one's face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one's back.

Charles Schwabb told me his smile had been worth a million dollars. And he was probably understating the truth. For Schwab's personality, his charm, his ability to make people like him, were almost wholly responsible for his extra ordinary success; and one of the most delightful factors in his personality was his captivating smile.

Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, "I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you."

Source : How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Tippy Makes More Friends!

When I (Dale Carnegie) was five years old, my father bought me a little yellow-haired pup for fifty cents. He was the light and joy of my childhood. Every afternoon about four-thirty, he would sit in the front yard with his beautiful eyes staring steadfastly at the path, as soon as he heard my voice or saw me swinging my dinner pail through the buck brush, he was off like shot, racing breathlessly up the hill to greet me with leaps of joy and barks of sheer ecstasy.

Tippy was my constant companion for five years. Then one tragic night - I shall never forget it - he was killed within ten feet of my head, killed by lightning. Tippy's death was the tragedy of my boyhood.

Tippy never read a book on psychology. Tippy knew by some divine instinct that you can make more friends in two months be becoming genuinely interested in other people that you can in two years by trying to get other people into becoming interested in you.

Alfred Adler, the famous Viennese psychologist, worte a book entitled What Life Should Mean to You. In that book he says:

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals tha all human failures spring.

Source : How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Secret for Dealing with People

One day, Ralph Waldo Emerson and his son tried to get a calf into the barn. But they made the common mistake of thinking only of what they wanted : Emerson pushed and his son pulled. But the calf was doing just what they were doing; he was thinking only of what he wanted; so he stiffened his legs and stubbornly refused to leave the pasture. The Irish housemaid saw their predicament. She couldn't write essays and books; but, on this occasion at least, she had more horse sense, or calf sense, than Emerson had. She thought of what the calf wanted; so she put her maternal finger in the calf's mouth and let the calf suck her finger as she gently led him into the barn.

Every act you have ever performed since the you were born was performed because you wanted something.

Lloyd George, Great Britain's Prime Minister during World War I, when someone asked him how he managed to stay in power after the other wartime leaders - Wilson, Orlando, and Clemencau - had been forgotten, he replied that if his staying on top might be attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.

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.

So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Charles Schwab's Secret to be Paid a Million Dollars!

One of the first people in American business to be paid a salary of over a million dollars a year (when there was no income tax and a person earning fifty dollars a week was considered well off) was Charles Schwab. He had been picked by Andrew Carnegie to become the first president of the newly formed United States Steel Company in 1921, when Schwab was only thrity eight years old. (Schwab later left U.S. Steel to take over the then-troubled Betlehem Steel Company, and he rebuilt it into one of the most profitable companies in America.)

Why did Andrew Carnegie pay a million dollars a year, or more than three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told me (Dale Carnegie) himself that he had many men working for him who know more about the manufacture of steel than he did.

Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is his secret set down in his own words - words that ought to be cast in eternal bronze and hung in every home and school, every shop and office in the land - words that children ought to memorize instead of wasting their time memorizing the conjugation of Latin verbs or the amount of the annual rainfall in Brazil - words that will all but transform your life and mide if we will only live them:

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people," said Schwab, "the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never critize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise."

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The Most Dangerous Killer REGARD Himself!

May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New York City, had ever known had come to its climax. After weeks of search, "Two Gun" Crowley - the killer, the gunman who didn't smoke or drink - was at bay, trapped is his sweetheart's apartment on West End Avenue.

One hundred and fifty policeman and detectives laid siege to his top-floor hideway. They chopped holes in the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the "cop killer", with teargas. Then they mounted their machine guns on surrounding buildings, and for more than an hour one of New York's fine residential areas reverberated with the crack of pistol fire and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an overstuffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand excited people watched the battle. Nothing like it had ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New York.

When Crowley was captured, Police Commissioner E.P. Mulrooney declared that the two-gun desperado was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered in the history of New York. "He will kill," said the commissioner, "at the drop of a feather."

But how did "Two Gun" Crowley regard him self? We know because while the police were firing into his apartment, he wrote a letter addressed, "To whom it may concern." And, as he wrote, the blood flowing from his wounds left a crimson trail on the paper. In this letter Crowley said: "Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do nobody any harm."

A short time before this, Crowley had been having a necking party with his girl friend on a country road out on Long Island. Suddenly a policeman walked up to the car and said: "Let me see your license."

Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut the policeman down with a shower of lead. As the dying officer fell, Crowley leaped out of the car, grabbed the officer's revolver, and fired another bullet into the prostrate body. And that was the killer who said : "Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do nobody any harm."

Crowley was sentenced to the electric chair. When he arrived at the death house in Sing Sing, did he say, "This is what I get for killing people?" - No, he said, "This is what I get for defending myself."

The point of the story is this:

"Two Gun" Crowley didn't blame himself for anything.

Is that an unusual attitude among criminals? If you think so, listen to this:

"I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man."

That's Al Capone speaking. Yes, America's most notorious Public Enemy - The most sinister gang leader who ever shot up Chicago. Capone didn't condemn him self. He actually regarded himself as public benefactor - an unappreciated and misunderstood public benefactor.

Nobody think negatively about themselves. If they make some mistakes,

they must have their own reasons and motive. Don't criticize / complain them directly, take time to understand why they did the mistakes. You will get respect from them.

Source : How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie