Summary: How to Win Friends & Influence People 1/4

First part. Fundamentals techniques in handling people

1.Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

Criticism is dangerous, because it hurts a person's precious pride, hurts their sense of importance, and arouses their resentment.

Criticisms are like homing pigeons, they always return to the nest.

When we deal with people we must remember that we are not dealing with logical creatures. We deal with emotional creatures, creatures bristling with prejudice and driven by pride and vanity.

Any fool can criticize, censure, and complain, and almost all fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

Instead of sensing people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That is much more profitable and interesting than criticism; and from this arises sympathy, tolerance, and kindness. To know everything is to forgive everything.

If you want to collect honey, don't kick the hive.

It is foolish to scold others, I have enough with my own limitations.

Don't judge if you don't want to be judged.

Don't complain about the snow on the neighbor's roof, when it also covers the threshold of your house. -Confucius

I will not speak ill of any man and of all I will say everything good that I know. -Benjamin Franklin

2.Give honest and sincere appreciation.

There is only one way to get someone to do something. And it is to make others want to do it.

A few years ago, a sociological study was carried out among wives who had left their homes, and what do you think was the main reason they gave for making their decision? "Lack of appreciation". The same conclusion was reached in a similar study of men. Often we take our spouse's presence so much for granted that we never express our appreciation.

If we stop thinking about ourselves for a while and start thinking about the good qualities of others, we will not have to resort to flattery, so cheap and so false that it is known as soon as it leaves the lips.

One of the most neglected virtues of our everyday existence is appreciation.

The deepest drive in human nature is "the desire to be important." -Dr. John Dewey

I consider that the greatest asset that I possess is my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men, and that the way to develop the best that is in man is through appreciation and encouragement. -Charles Schwab

Here lies a man who knew how to surround himself with men more skilled than he. -Dale Carnegie

There is not that I need so much as food for my own esteem. -Alfred Lunt

Do not fear the enemies that attack you. Fear friends who flatter you. -General Obregon

I will pass this road only once; so whatever good you can do or whatever courtesy you may have to any human being, let it be now. I won't leave it for tomorrow, nor will I forget it, because I'll never come here again.

Every man I know is superior to me in some way. In that sense, I learn from him. -Emerson

3.Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Why talk about what we need or want? That's childish. Absurd. But no one else is interested. Others are like you or me: they are interested in what they want or need.

So the only way we have to influence others is to talk about what they want, and show them how to get it.

Tomorrow you will want to persuade someone to do something. Before you speak, pause and ask yourself, "How can I make him want to do it?"

The world is full of selfish, exploitative people. So the few individuals who unselfishly try to serve others have enormous advantages.

Seeing from the other person's point of view, and arousing in that person a fervent desire for something, should not be confused with manipulating that person into doing something that is detrimental to that person's own interests. Both parties must come out winning in the negotiation.

Whoever can do this has the whole world with him; who cannot, walks alone on the road.

If there is a secret to success, it lies in the ability to appreciate another's point of view and see things from that point of view as well as your own. -Henry Ford

The man who can put himself in the place of others, who can understand the workings of the mind of others, does not have to worry about the future. -Owen D. Young