How to Win Friends and Influence People

Just getting our work done isn’t enough. More important is the ability to communicate: “about 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering—to personality and the ability to lead people” (2).

A survey in Meriden, Connecticut found that people are firstly concerned about their health, followed by getting along well with people and winning them over. The author searched, but he couldn’t find any information on how to do well socially, so he wrote this book. Well over a year of research, including tomes on psychology, the biographies of successful people, and interviews with leaders and celebrities went into the work; this was followed by a lecture series on how to win friends and influence people, whose participants experimented with the techniques and reported their results.

Participants in the series saw more success and larger earnings at work as well as better relations with their families. This book is about taking action and getting the same results. 

Two-Gun Crowley was a ruthless cop-killer who finally was captured and sentenced to be executed. He went to the electric chair saying, “This is what I get for defending myself” (4).