Simon and schuster

PRINCIPLE 3 
Arouse in the other person an eager want. 
In a Nutshell 
FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE 
PRINCIPLE 1 
Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. 
PRINCIPLE 2 
Give honest and sincere appreciation. 
PRINCIPLE 3 
Arouse in the other person an eager want.
 
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PART TWO 
Six Ways To Make People Like You 
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4 
 
“DO THIS AND YOU’LL BE WELCOME ANYWHERE.”
 
Why read this book to find out how to win friends? Why not study the technique of the greatest winner 
of friends the world has ever known? Who is he? You may meet him tomorrow coming down the street. When 
you get within ten feet of him, he will begin to wag his tail. If you stop and pat him, he will almost jump out of 
his skin to show you how much he likes you. And you know that behind this show of affection on his part, there 
are no ulterior motives: he doesn’t want to sell you any real estate, and he doesn’t want to marry you. 
Did you ever stop to think that a dog is the only animal that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen 
has to lay eggs, a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing. But a dog makes his living by giving you 
nothing but love. 
When I was five years old, my father bought a little yellow-haired pup for fifty cents. He was the light 
and joy of my childhood. Every afternoon about four-thirty, he would sit in the front yard with his beautiful eyes 
staring steadfastly at the path, and as soon as he heard my voice or saw me swinging my dinner pail through the 
buck brush, he was off like a shot, racing breathlessly up the hill to greet me with leaps of joy and barks of sheer 
ecstasy. 
Tippy was my constant companion for five years. Then one tragic night—I shall never forget it—he 
was killed within ten feet of my head, killed by lightning. Tippy’s death was the tragedy of my boyhood. 
You never read a book on psychology, Tippy. You didn’t need to. You knew by some divine instinct 
that you can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in 
two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Let me repeat that. 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. 
Yet I know and you know people who blunder through life trying to wigwag other people into 
becoming interested in them. 
Of course, it doesn’t work. People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are 
interested in themselves—morning, noon and after dinner. 
The New York Telephone Company made a detailed study of telephone conversations to find out 
which word is the most frequently used. You have guessed it: it is the personal pronoun “I.” “I.” “I.” It was used 
3,900 times in 500 telephone conversations. “I.” “I.” “I.” “I.” When you see a group photograph that you are in, 
whose picture do you look for first? 
If we merely try to impress people and get people interested in us, we will never have many true, 
sincere friends. Friends, real friends, are not made that way. 
Napoleon tried it, and in his last meeting with Josephine he said, “Josephine, I have been as fortunate 
as any man ever was on this earth; and yet, at this hour, you are the only person in the world on whom I can 
rely.” And historians doubt whether he could rely even on her. 
Alfred Adler, the famous Viennese psychologist, wrote a book entitled 
What Life Should Mean to You. 
In that book he says, “It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties 
in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures 
spring.” 
You may read scores of erudite tomes on psychology without coming across a statement more 
significant for you and for me. Adler’s statement is so rich with meaning that I am going to repeat it in italics: