Dale Carnegie seminars for speaking and selling are reaching new record levels across the country. His down-to-earth philosophy, along with his keen insights into human nature, explain the steady growth of Dale Carnegie training programs. Below is a brief sampling of Dale Carnegie’s well-chosen thoughts.

On Courage

Would you like to have more courage? Here are five short rules, which, if you follow them, I guarantee will increase your store of fortitude.

1. Act as if you were courageous. This makes you a bit braver, as if one side of yourself had been challenged and wished to show it was not wholly afraid.
2. Pause to reflect that others have had to face great discouragements and great obstacles and have overcome them. What others have done, surely you can do.
3. Remember that your life forces move in a sort of rhythm and that if you feel depressed and without the power to face life you may be at the bottom of the trough; if you will keep up your courage, you will probably swing out of it by the very forces which at the moment are sucking you down.
4. Remember you feel more defeated and downcast at night than during the daylight hours. Courage comes with the sun.
5. Courage is the measure of a big soul. Try to measure up.

On Perspective

About 90 percent of the things in our lives are right and about 10 percent are wrong. If we want to be happy, all we have to do is concentrate on the 90 percent that are right and ignore the 10 percent that are wrong. If we want to be worried and bitter and have stomach ulcers, all we have to do is to concentrate on the 10 percent that are wrong and ignore the 90 percent that are glorious.

On Selling Ideas

Don’t you have much more faith in ideas that you discover for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter? If so, isn’t it bad judgment to try to ram your opinions down the throats of other people? Wouldn’t it be wiser to make suggestions — and let the other man think out the conclusion for himself?

On Worry

If you are worried, do these three things: First, ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen?” Second, prepare to accept it if you have to. Then, calmly proceed to improve on the worst.

On Values

I honestly believe that this is one of the greatest secrets to true peace of mind — a decent sense of values. We could annihilate 50 percent of all our worries at once if we would develop a sort of private gold standard — a gold standard of what things are worth to us in terms of our lives.

On Pep Talks

Is giving yourself a pep talk every day silly, superficial, childish? No! On the contrary, it is the very essence of sound psychology. “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” Those words are just as true today as they were 18 centuries ago when Marcus Aurelius first wrote them in his book of Meditations.

On Enthusiasm

How can you make yourself become enthusiastic? By telling yourself what you like about what you are doing and pass on quickly from the part you don’t like to the part you do like. Then act enthusiastic; tell someone about it; let them know why it interests you.