Sách How To Sell Your Way Through Life PDF

To write a book of theories on “how the other fellow should succeed” is quite common. But for an author to definitely demonstrate that his ideas will work, and that he personally can make them work, is quite rare. Hence, it is not for the purpose of boasting—but to give you confidence that what you are about to read is practical, workable, proven philosophy—when we mention the following. As you read this book, you will feel as though the author was present in the pages.

The lessons were not just written; they were first lived, and then put into print. The author has sold his way through life so successfully using the philosophy and methods taught in this book, that he lives in a castle in Florida, which is one of the famous showplaces of the entire South. From it he commands not only a rare view of beautiful Lake Dora, but also of the entire town of fashionable Mount Dora, in the “Golden Triangle.” He is the first to occupy this castle, upon which it is reported the builder spent about $100,000. It is to be developed into a “model American home.” It is here that 15 children are to be adopted who will be schooled in these principles, so that they, too, may sell their way through life successfully.

Life, you can’t subdue me, because I refuse to take your discipline seriously. When you try to hurt me, I laugh, and laughter knows no pain. I appropriate your joys wherever I find them. Your sorrows neither discourage nor frighten me, for there is laughter in my soul. When I get the thing I want, I am glad, but temporary defeat does not make me sad. I simply set music to the words of defeat and turn it into a song about laughter. Your tears are not for me. I like laughter much better, and because I like it, I use it as a substitute for grief and sorrow and pain and disappointment.

Life, you are a fickle trickster, don’t deny it! You slipped the emotion of love into my heart so you might use it as a thorn with which to prick my soul, but I have learned to dodge your trap—with laughter. You try to lure me with the desire for gold, but I have outwitted you by following the trail that leads to knowledge, instead. You induce me to build beautiful friendships, then convert my friends into enemies so you may harden my heart, but I sidestep your fickleness by laughing off your attempt and selecting new friends in my own way. You cause men to cheat me in trade, so I will become hard and irritable, but I win again because I possess only one precious asset, and this is something no man can steal—IT IS THE POWER TO THINK MY OWN THOUGHTS AND BE MYSELF, plus the capacity to laugh at you for your pains.

Life, you are licked as far as I am concerned, because you have nothing with which to lure me away from laughter and you are powerless to scare me. This book was not written for the purpose of expressing heroism or brilliancy. Its sole purpose is to convey practical information on the psychology of negotiation; information that is known to be sound.

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. Now 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. 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 today’s 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 intact—even 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.

THIRTY-FIVE years ago a young man dropped from a moving freight train in East Orange, N. J., and hurriedly made his way to the laboratory of Thomas A. Edison. When asked to state his business before being permitted to see Mr. Edison, the young man boldly replied, “I am going to become his partner!” His boldness got him past the secretary. An hour later he was at work, scrubbing floors in the Edison plant. Five years later he was a partner of the great Edison. The man’s name is Edwin C. Barnes, known throughout the United States as the distributor of the Ediphone dictating machine. His home is in Florida, not very far from my own home. I have known him for a quarter of a century; have known him through the relationship of close personal friendship that gives me the privilege of saying that he sold himself to Edison through the psychology of selling described in Part 1 of this book.