Quotes from Dale Carnegie

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.

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."*

Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.

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.

This is the day of dramatisation. Merely stating a truth isn't enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do it. Television does it. And you will have to do it if you want attention.

confusion is the main cause of worry

Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.

When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.

My mother always said two people can't fight if one person doesn't want to

Keep busy. The worried person must lose himself in action, lest he wither in despair.

Shut off the past! Let the dead past bury its dead. . . . Shut out the yesterdays which have lighted fools the way to dusty death. . . . The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. Shut off the future as tightly as the past. . . . The future is today. . . . There is no tomorrow.

Experience has taught me," says Sam Wood, "that it is safest to drop, as quickly as possible, people who pretend to be what they aren't.

Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember "Life is too short to be little.

There is only one way to happiness," Epictetus taught the Romans, "and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don't like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.

prayer:   God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.

If a man's heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can't win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don't want to change their minds. They can't be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.

Remember what Lincoln said: 'A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.

It is an interesting paradox that the more you surrender the credit for something you've done, the more memorable you become, and the more you actually end up receiving credit.

There's magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let's examine the facts.

Psychology: "Sympathy the human species universally craves. The child eagerly displays his injury; or even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant sympathy. For the same purpose adults … show their bruises, relate their accidents, illness, especially details of surgical operations. 'Self-pity' for misfortunes real or imaginary is, in some measure, practically a universal practice.

Give honest and sincere appreciation.

Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally had to blunder through this old world for a third of a century before it even began to dawn upon me that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don't criticise themselves for anything no matter how wrong it may be.