Dale Carnegie is considered to be one of the most influential and most quoted figures in the field of self-improvement. Here’s his most well known quotes.
Dale Carnegie – Author
Dale Carnegie was an American author and public speaker who was born in 1888. He is best known for his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
As one of the first self-help authors, Carnegie wrote extensively on how to improve one’s communication and interpersonal skills. His work continues to be popular even today, and famous figures in the self-improvement world often credit Carnegie as their inspiration.
Some of Dale Carnegie’s most famous quotes include:
Best Dale Carnegie Quotes
Always make the other person feel important.
– Dale Carnegie
Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
– Dale Carnegie
If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic.
– Dale Carnegie
There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
– Dale Carnegie
Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.
– Dale Carnegie
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
– Dale Carnegie
Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.
– Dale Carnegie
No matter what happens, always be yourself.
– Dale Carnegie
One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.
– Dale Carnegie
We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.
– Dale Carnegie
A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.
– Dale Carnegie
Fear is the result of a lack of confidence. A lack of confidence is the result of not knowing what you can do. A lack of knowing what you can do is caused by a lack of experience. A lack of experience is caused by a lack of doing something new.
– Dale Carnegie
Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don’t put off being happy until some future date.
– Dale Carnegie
For better or worse, you must play your own instrument in the orchestra of life.
– Dale Carnegie
Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic
– Dale Carnegie
Big shots are only little shots who kept on shooting.
– Dale Carnegie
Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.
– Dale Carnegie
Quotes by Dale Carnegie
Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn – and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
– Dale Carnegie
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
– Dale Carnegie
Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.
– Dale Carnegie
First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.
– Dale Carnegie
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.
– Dale Carnegie
Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.
– Dale Carnegie
By fighting, you never get enough – but by yielding, you get more than you expected.
– Dale Carnegie
It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.
– Dale Carnegie
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
– Dale Carnegie
Names are the sweetest, most important sound in any language.
– Dale Carnegie
There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
– Dale Carnegie
Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.
– Dale Carnegie
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.’
– Dale Carnegie
Two men looked out from prison bars, one saw the mud, the other saw stars.
– Dale Carnegie
Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
– Dale Carnegie
Famous Dale Carnegie Quotes
The best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.
– Dale Carnegie
Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But they don’t think so.
– Dale Carnegie
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
– Dale Carnegie
Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.
– Dale Carnegie
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
– Dale Carnegie
Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.
– Dale Carnegie
Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism – and wars.
– Dale Carnegie
It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.
– Dale Carnegie
The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.
– Dale Carnegie
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
– Dale Carnegie
Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance and arouses resentment.
– Dale Carnegie
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.
– Dale Carnegie
If you are not in the process of becoming the person you want to be, you are automatically engaged in becoming the person you don’t want to be.
– Dale Carnegie
You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people that you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.
– Dale Carnegie
Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. ‘To know all is to forgive all.’
– Dale Carnegie
Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.
– Dale Carnegie
Quotes Dale Carnegie
Our thoughts make us what we are.
– Dale Carnegie
The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.
– Dale Carnegie
You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
– Dale Carnegie
Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.
– Dale Carnegie
Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.
– Dale Carnegie
To be interesting, be interested.
– Dale Carnegie
There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.
– Dale Carnegie
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
– Dale Carnegie
You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
– Dale Carnegie
Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: Wouldn’t you like to have that?” Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?
– Dale Carnegie
Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.
– Dale Carnegie
Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
– Dale Carnegie
Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire
– Dale Carnegie
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
– Dale Carnegie
Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.
– Dale Carnegie
Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.
– Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie Sayings
If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.
– Dale Carnegie
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.
– Dale Carnegie
Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.
– Dale Carnegie
Every day is a new life to a wise man.
– Dale Carnegie
The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping.
– Dale Carnegie
The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener – a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.
– Dale Carnegie
All of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
– Dale Carnegie
Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.
– Dale Carnegie
The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
– Dale Carnegie
You are merely not feeling equal to the tasks before you.
– Dale Carnegie
If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.
– Dale Carnegie
Arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walk a lonely way.
– Dale Carnegie
All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory.
– Dale Carnegie
You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or is discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.
– Dale Carnegie
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
– Dale Carnegie
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation of this side of insanity.
– Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie Quotations
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.
– Dale Carnegie
Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
– Dale Carnegie
When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.
– Dale Carnegie
If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.
– Dale Carnegie
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
– Dale Carnegie
Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.
– Dale Carnegie
If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.
– Dale Carnegie
If you want to keep happiness, you have to share it.
– Dale Carnegie
Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
– Dale Carnegie
Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.
– Dale Carnegie
Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
– Dale Carnegie
Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.
– Dale Carnegie
The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.
– Dale Carnegie
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
– Dale Carnegie
People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.
– Dale Carnegie
Even god doesn’t propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I?
– Dale Carnegie
Related: 300+ Meaningful Quotes About God And A Power Greater Than Ourselves
Quotes from Dale Carnegie
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you thought could never be yours.
– Dale Carnegie
Winning friends begins with friendliness.
– Dale Carnegie
Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.
– Dale Carnegie
Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.
– Dale Carnegie
Act as if you were already happy and that will tend to make you happy
– Dale Carnegie
You can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.
– Dale Carnegie
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
– Dale Carnegie
Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession.
– Dale Carnegie
You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.
– Dale Carnegie
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