Simon and schuster

Preface To Revised Edition 
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. 
How to Win Friends and Influence People 
took its 
place in publishing history as one of the all-time international bestsellers. 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 cartoon to novels. The book itself was translated into 
almost every known written language. Each generation has discovered it anew and has found it relevant. 
Which brings us to the logical question: Why revise a book that has proven and continues to prove its 
vigorous and universal appeal? Why tamper with success? 
To answer that, we must realize that Dale Carnegie himself was a tireless reviser of his own work 
during his lifetime. 
How to Win Friends and Influence People
was written to be used as a textbook for his 
courses in Effective Speaking and Human Relations and is still used in those courses today. Until his death in 
1955 he constantly improved and revised the course itself to make it applicable to the evolving needs of an ever-
growing public. No one was more sensitive to the changing currents of present-day life than Dale Carnegie. He 
constantly improved and refined his methods of teaching; he updated his book on Effective Speaking several 
times. Had he lived longer, he himself would have revised 
How to Win Friends and Influence People 
to better 
reflect the changes that have taken place in the world since the thirties. 
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 lnfluence 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. 
– Dorothy 
Carnegie 
(Mrs. Dale Carnegie) 
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