Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Dale Carnegie (American Self-Help Author)

Dale Harbison Carnegie (1888–1955,) originally Dale Carnegey, was an American lecturer, author, and innovator in the field of public speaking and the psychology of the successful personality. He is the author of the perennial self-help bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936.) Carnegie benefited from the American desire for success by peddling advice that helped readers feel and become successful.

Carnegie was born in Maryville, Missouri. His family lived poorly on a small farm during his childhood. He worked as a salesperson and an actor before moving to New York City to teach public speaking at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA.) When his courses got popular, he standardized his teaching methods by publishing pamphlets. He collected these into book form as Public Speaking: A Practical Course for Business Men (1926.) He also compiled Little Known Facts About Well Known People (1934.)

In 1936, Carnegie published How to Win Friends and Influence People, which offered anecdotes, advice, homespun wisdom, and an unfaltering belief in the public and private benefits of positive thinking. At the back of the book’s enormous popularity, he established hundreds of branches of the Dale Carnegie Institute for effective speaking and human relations, which registered 50,000 people a year at the time of his death.

Dale Carnegie was not related to the Scottish-American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, but changed the spelling of his last name from “Carnagey” at a time when Andrew Carnegie was a widely recognized name.

Carnegie also wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948,) Lincoln the Unknown (1932,) and several other books.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Dale Carnegie

Do things for others and you’ll find your self-consciousness evaporating like morning dew.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Giving, Kindness, Service

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Sleep, Worry

One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: Have no anxiety about the morrow; or the words of Sir William Osler; Live in day-tight compartments.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Life and Living

Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Effectiveness, Focus, Work

If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Results

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Worry

Seventy per cent of all patients who come to physicians could cure themselves if they got rid of their fears and worries.
—Dale Carnegie

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Words

I deal with the obvious. I present, reiterate and glorify the obvious—because the obvious is what people need to be told.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Facts

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Unhappiness, Living Well

Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Speakers, Speaking

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Courage, Bravery

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the past together again. So let’s remember: Don’t try to saw sawdust.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Past, The Past

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Perseverance, Enthusiasm, Passion, Endurance, Success, Resolve

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.
—Dale Carnegie

Your heart pumps enough blood through your body every day to fill a railway tank car. It exerts enough energy every twenty-four hours to shovel twenty tons of coal onto a platform three feet high. It does this incredible amount of work for fifty, seventy, or maybe ninety years. How can it stand it? Dr. Walter B. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, explained it. He said “Most people have the idea that the heart is working all the time. As a matter of fact, there is a definite rest period after each contraction. When beating at a moderate rate of seventy pulses per minute, the heart is actually working only nine hours out of the twenty-four. In the aggregate its rest periods total a full fifteen hours per day.
—Dale Carnegie

When fate hands us a lemon, make lemonade.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Fate

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Confidence, Fear, Doing, Anxiety, Procrastination, Busy, Accomplishment

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Ideas

Today is life—the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: The Present, Time, Living, Present, Enthusiasm

The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Communication

George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: “The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not”. So don’t bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking—and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth—and one of the best.
—Dale Carnegie

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Critics, Art, Criticism

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes the furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The “sure thing” boat never gets far from shore.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Will Power, Risk, Success, Success & Failure, Danger, Chance, Risk-taking

For better or worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life
—Dale Carnegie

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Feelings, Fear

The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping .
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Applause, Praise

When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at al, but our hate is turning our days and nights into a hellish turmoil.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Forgiveness

I realize now that people are not thinking about you and me or caring what is said about us. They are thinking about themselves—before breakfast, after breakfast, and right on until ten minutes past midnight. They would be a thousand times more concerned about a slight headache of their own than they would about the news of your death or mine.
—Dale Carnegie

If you want to win friends, make it a point to remember them. If you remember my name, you pay me a subtle compliment; you indicate that I have made an impression on you. Remember my name and you add to my feeling of importance.
—Dale Carnegie
Topics: Memory

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