8) What was the secret of Lincolns success in dealing with people?
9) How did Lincoln handle people when he was a young lawyer?
10) Why was Lincoln challenged to fight a duel?
11) What invaluable lesson was Lincoln taught during the duel?
12) What letter did Lincoln write to general Meade? Why didnt he send it?
13) What happened to the plane of Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot, when he was returning to his home in Los Angeles?
12) What letter did Lincoln write to general Meade? Why didnt he send it?
13) What happened to the plane of Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot, when he was returning to his home in Los Angeles?
14) How did Bob Hoover behave when his mechanic filled the wrong fuel into his plane?
15) Do parents often tempt to criticize their children?
16) What does Dale Carnegie recommend to do if we want to change somebody?
17) What does Dale Carnegie say about criticism?
18) What does Carnegie recommend to do instead of condemning people?
19) What did Dr. Johnson say about judgement of people?
20) What is the first D. Carnegies principle?
21) Do you think you will use this principle in dealing with people?
II
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 Americas 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 things 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 didnt 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 livestock 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 didnt care about the ribbons they had won. But Father did. These prizes gave him a feeling of importance.
If our ancestors hadnt had this flaming urge for a feeling of importance, civilization would have been impossible. Without it, we should have been just about like animals.
It was this desire for a feeling of importance that led[11] an uneducated, poverty-stricken grocery clerk to study some law books he found in the bottom of a barrel of household plunder that he had bought for fifty cents. You have probably heard of this grocery clerk. His name was Lincoln.
It was this desire for a feeling of importance that inspired Dickens to write his immortal novels. This desire inspired Sir Christopher Wren to design his symphonies in stone. This desire made Rockefeller amass millions that he never spent! And this same desire made the richest family in your town build a house far too large for its requirements.
This desire makes you want to wear the latest styles, drive the latest cars, and talk about your brilliant children.