Foreign thinker
Dale Carnegie
Dale CarnegieSelf-help writing and communication-skills trainingAmerican1888–1955
“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.”
Life and Thought
Dale Carnegie was an American writer, speaker, and instructor in communication skills, public speaking, and personal development. His book How to Win Friends and Influence People is among the best-known works of self-help literature.
Dale Carnegie was born on November 24, 1888, in Maryville, Missouri. After trying several occupations, he turned to teaching public speaking and began offering classes at the New York YMCA in 1912; these classes later became the basis of the Dale Carnegie Course.
Carnegie emphasized active listening, sincere interest in others, avoiding humiliation and harsh criticism, encouragement, and effective conversation. How to Win Friends and Influence People, published in 1936, presented these ideas in an accessible and practical form. In How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, he also addressed the management of worry and practical ways of confronting everyday difficulties.
Carnegie was not an academic theorist, but his writing and training courses played an influential role in the growth of popular self-help literature and communication-skills education in the twentieth century. He died on November 1, 1955.