A Sure Way of Making Enemies – and How to Avoid It

When Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, he confessed that if he could be right 75 per cent of the time, he would reach the highest measure of his expectation. If that was the highest rating that one of the most distinguished men of the twentieth century could hope to obtain, what about you and me? If you can be sure of being right only 55 per cent of the time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55 per cent of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong? 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 direct blow at their intelligence, judgment, 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 am 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 so subtly, so adroitly, that no one will feel that you are doing it. This was expressed succinctly by Alexander Pope: “Men must be taught as if you taught them not And things unknown proposed as things forgot.” Over three hundred years ago Galileo said: “You cannot teach a man anything you can only help him to find it within himself.” As Lord Chesterfield said to his son: “Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.” Socrates said repeatedly to his followers in Athens: “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”

Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People (pp. 115-116).