How to Win Friends and Influence People

This is not a spoken quotation but the title of Dale Carnegie’s best-known self-help book, first published during the Great Depression. Carnegie had been teaching adult-education courses in New York on public speaking and interpersonal effectiveness; the book distilled those lecture materials and case examples into a set of practical principles for social and professional life. Its publication in 1936 helped popularize a distinctly modern, business-oriented genre of advice literature focused on persuasion, likability, and leadership through everyday human relations.

As a title, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” frames social interaction in instrumental terms: relationships (“friends”) and persuasion (“influence”) are presented as learnable skills that can be pursued deliberately. The phrasing suggests that success depends less on technical expertise than on emotional intelligence—empathy, tact, and the ability to make others feel valued. It also reflects the early twentieth-century American faith in self-improvement through method and practice, while inviting debate about whether “winning” friends treats human connection as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.