A Sure Way of Making Enemies

You can tell people they are wrong by a look or an intonation or a gesture just as eloquently as you can in words – and if you tell them they are wrong, do you make them want to agree with you? Never! For you have struck a different blow at their intelligence, judgement, pride and self-respect. That will make them want to strike back. But it will never make them want to change their minds. You may then hurl at them all the logic of a Plato or an Immanuel Kant, but you will not alter their opinions, for you have hurt their feelings.

Never begin by announcing “I’m going to prove so-and-so to you.” That’s bad. That’s tantamount to saying: I’m smarter than you are. I’m going to tell you a thing or two and make you change your mind. 

That is a challenge. It arouses opposition and makes the listener want to battle with you before you even start.

It is difficult, under even the most benign conditions, to change people’s minds. So why make it harder? Why handicap yourself?

If you are going to prove anything, don’t let anybody know it. Do it subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel that you are doing it.

Courtesy: Dale Carnegie

You...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating;
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise


If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same,
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken,
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build em up with worn-out tools;


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginning
And never breath a word about your loss,
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold On!”


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
And which is more – you’ll be a man, my son!