He opens this chapter by pointing out that "the greatest urge driving man is the desire to be important" (that may be paraphrased). Without this urge, he says, there would be no human progress, we would be little more than animals. It's a good thinking point.
As I read his examples of people going to extreme lengths to satisfy this urge, to the point of making themselves ill or insane, it reminded me of a Theodore Dalrymple article following the recent Norway massacre. Read the full article here, but some key points are:
A wider cause gives meaning and purpose to your life, and persuades you that your resentment, your anger, is not petty or personal, but something much grander. You do not see that, by the standards of most people, you have suffered little.It's a bit of a tangent, but one worth making, even briefly.
...First is resentment; second, self-importance; third, the desire for fame or notoriety; fourth, the search for a transcendent meaning to life, and fifth, a difficulty in forming ordinary human relationships, whether of love or friendship.
But going back to Dale Carnegie's book, he tells the story of Charles Schwab, who was paid an unimaginably large salary to run US Steel not - by his own admission - for his understanding of the product of manufacturing process, but for his ability to deal with people. This is the greatest skill you can cultivate, and the one that will drive you further in life than many others.
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