84 pages • 2 hours read
Dale CarnegieHow to Win Friends and Influence People
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking”
Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary: “You Can’t Win an Argument”
As a young man, the author loved public speaking and enjoyed debating. At a banquet honoring a famous aviator, a nearby guest uttered a famous saying: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will” (109). He cited the Bible as the source. Knowing the quote was from Shakespeare, the author got into a vigorous argument with the other guest.
Seated next to the author was a friend who happened to be a Shakespeare expert. He ruled that the quote was, indeed, from the Bible. On the way home, the author asked why he had lied; his friend replied that there was no point in humiliating a stranger over nothing. The author realized that “I not only had made the storyteller uncomfortable but had put my friend in an embarrassing situation” (110).
Winning an argument is a futile task: Invariably, it fails to convince opponents but succeeds in alienating them. Arguing over small matters is petty: “Remember, you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry” (114).
Patrick O’Haire sold cars but loved to argue. He won a lot of arguments on the car lot but few sales.
