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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
In his seminal work, "The Art of Public Speaking", Dale Carnegie presents a comprehensive examination of effective communication and oratory techniques. Written in an accessible and engaging style, the unabridged edition serves as both a practical guide and an inspirational manual for speakers at every level. Carnegie deftly combines timeless principles of rhetoric with modern sensibilities, drawing upon case studies, anecdotes, and exercises that encourage active participation. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century America, this book reflects the rising importance of public speaking in professional and social contexts, urging readers to harness their innate potential to influence and inspire. Dale Carnegie, a pioneer in self-improvement and communication, was uniquely positioned to write this influential text. His background in sales and his own challenges with public expression informed his understanding of the nuances required for effective speaking. Carnegie's experiences, coupled with his commitment to personal growth and empowerment, culminated in this work that not only instructs but also motivates individuals to transcend their fears and master the art of speaking. For scholars, professionals, and aspiring communicators alike, "The Art of Public Speaking" remains an invaluable resource. Carnegie's meticulous strategies and insights will resonate with anyone looking to improve their oratorial skills, cultivate confidence, and leave a lasting impact in both personal and professional arenas. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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The Art Of Public Speaking (Unabridged)
Table of Contents
Introduction
A steady voice can turn hesitation into influence. The Art of Public Speaking shows how that transformation happens through method, practice, and purpose. Dale Carnegie, drawing on years of teaching adults, presents public speaking not as innate talent but as a craft anyone can learn. The book confronts the universal conflict between fear and expression, showing that confidence grows from preparation and service to an audience. Rather than promising shortcuts, it sets out a disciplined path: clear thinking, organized ideas, and energetic delivery. Its enduring appeal lies in linking practical technique with humane intention, so that speaking becomes a tool for work, community, and personal growth.
This work endures as a classic because it crystallized a modern, democratic approach to rhetoric. Instead of impenetrable theory or ornate oratory, it insists on clarity, sincerity, and audience-centered communication. Its influence extends across prescriptive nonfiction, business communication, and self-improvement, where later guides adopted its blend of practical drills and ethical emphasis. For more than a century, students, professionals, and community leaders have returned to its pages for reliable methods that adapt to changing contexts. The text holds a stable place in the history of eloquence: a bridge between classical principles and twentieth-century pragmatism, readable enough for beginners yet rigorous enough to shape lasting habits.
Key facts anchor its reputation. The Art of Public Speaking was first published in 1915, coauthored by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein during a period of expanding adult education and civic discourse in the United States. Often presented today in unabridged form, it preserves the original scope: chapters on preparation, composition, delivery, persuasion, voice, and gesture, supported by exercises and examples. Carnegie’s intention was straightforward: equip ordinary people to speak effectively in practical settings, from meetings to public forums. The book’s guidance rests on observation and practice rather than ornament, reflecting Carnegie’s experience teaching public speaking and his belief that effective speech serves both speaker and audience.
Carnegie’s purpose shines through each section: to demystify the act of speaking by breaking it into manageable tasks and steady routines. He teaches readers to shape ideas with structure, reinforce them with vivid illustration, and deliver them with vitality and control. A strong undercurrent is ethical: persuasion should clarify and uplift, not manipulate. The text treats public speaking as an extension of clear thinking and disciplined living, guiding readers to deepen their knowledge so their words carry weight. Without relying on mystery or charisma, it encourages patient practice, attentive listening, and honest expression, so that confidence grows from preparation and genuine concern for the people addressed.
In literary history, this book exemplifies an influential strain of prescriptive nonfiction: handbooks that merge technique with character formation. It reframes rhetoric from a ceremonial art into an everyday tool for work and citizenship. By adapting classical concepts to contemporary needs, it helped normalize the idea that effective speaking can be taught step by step. Its style—direct, illustrative, and encouraging—became a model for later communication manuals. The result is a text that belongs both to the tradition of rhetoric and to the modern self-improvement shelf, a rare crossover that has kept it in use across schools, clubs, and workplaces long after its initial appearance.
The themes animating these pages are practical and humane. Courage is treated not as a spark of genius but as a habit developed through doing the hard, small things: preparing, practicing, and caring about listeners. Authenticity matters as much as technique; the best delivery emerges from conviction. Clarity and structure create momentum; examples and stories make ideas palpable. Above all, the book insists that public speaking is a service, aligning the speaker’s aims with the audience’s needs. These themes have durable power because they address universal challenges—stage fright, confusion, indifference—with methods that build skill while also shaping character.
Readers encounter a toolkit rather than a theory: ways to gather material, arrange it logically, and present it vigorously. It covers voice and breath, emphasis and pause, posture and gesture—physical elements that reinforce meaning. It explains how to choose examples, balance evidence with illustration, and adapt tone to occasion. Memory and notes are treated as supports for, not substitutes for, mastery. The book pairs such guidance with sustained practice, using exercises that build fluency over time. Without dwelling on jargon, it guides the speaker from preparation to platform, insisting that strong speaking grows from strong thinking, and that a lively style springs from purposeful content.
The unabridged text matters because it preserves the work’s full architecture: discussions, drills, outlines, and illustrative passages that show principles in action. By presenting the complete sequence, it allows readers to experience the cumulative effect of the training—how techniques interlock and reinforce one another. Trimming might deliver quick tips, but the original pacing builds endurance and confidence. The complete edition also conveys the historical voice of early twentieth-century instruction while remaining applicable to today’s contexts. In keeping the entire design intact, the unabridged version honors the authors’ intention to offer a comprehensive, progressive course in speaking rather than a handful of disconnected hints.
This book speaks to a wide spectrum of readers. Beginners find an accessible path through anxiety, with concrete steps that replace vague fear with focused action. Experienced speakers gain refinements—ways to sharpen structure, strengthen evidence, and command a room without strain. Students, professionals, educators, and community advocates discover adaptable strategies for formal talks, brief reports, impromptus, and ceremonial remarks. The work recognizes that contexts differ, yet insists that the core disciplines of clarity, energy, and sincerity travel well. Its enduring utility lies in this balance: principles strong enough to guide any occasion, and techniques flexible enough to fit each unique audience.
As an influence, The Art of Public Speaking helped set expectations for what a communication manual should deliver: practical exercises, ethical grounding, and an approachable style. Its methods filtered into classrooms, professional training, and civic clubs that prize clear, confident speech. Carnegie’s later prominence in the field of personal development also kept attention on this earlier work, where many of his foundational ideas about human relations and clear expression first took shape in an instructional form. The result is a cross-generational legacy: a book that trained speakers directly and indirectly by shaping the pedagogy and culture of public speaking instruction.
Reading the book today, one notices its calm confidence and clean organization. The prose is brisk and concrete, favoring examples and guidance over abstraction. Although it bears the idiom of its time, the counsel feels contemporary because it pushes readers to know their material, respect their audience, and move with purpose. There is encouragement without flattery, discipline without severity. The voice is that of a seasoned coach: practical, patient, and insistent that skill comes from doing. That tone keeps the text engaging even for modern readers accustomed to digital presentations and fast-paced meetings, reminding them that fundamentals never go out of date.
The Art of Public Speaking remains relevant because it unites timeless themes—clarity, courage, sincerity—with concrete methods any reader can practice. It shows that eloquence is not a performance trick but the natural result of clear thought, organized material, and energetic delivery. In an era of slides, screens, and remote audiences, its insistence on purpose and audience awareness is even more vital. The unabridged edition’s completeness deepens the training, offering a full course rather than fragments. As a classic, it continues to invite readers to build not just a speech, but a habit of speaking that enlarges their work, community, and character.
Synopsis
The Art of Public Speaking (Unabridged) presents a comprehensive manual for building speaking skill, combining foundational principles with practical drills. Dale Carnegie arranges the material to guide readers from overcoming fear to mastering delivery and composition. The unabridged text preserves chapter-end questions and exercises, model passages, and illustrative speeches intended for practice rather than passive reading. Its approach emphasizes habit formation, asserting that confidence, clarity, and persuasion arise from methodical preparation and repeated performance. The book’s organization moves stepwise through mindset, voice, gesture, language, structure, persuasion, adaptation to audiences, and special occasions, culminating in a sustained program designed to improve competence through consistent work.
Early chapters address stage fright and the acquisition of self-confidence. The authors explain that nervousness is common and becomes manageable through knowledge of the subject, a definite purpose, and frequent speaking. Practical measures include strong openings, direct engagement with listeners, deep breathing, and channeling adrenaline into energy. The importance of poise, composure, and a constructive attitude is linked to preparation and rehearsal. Readers are urged to speak often, start with small groups, and focus attention outward on the message and audience rather than inward on self-consciousness. Self-control is presented as the cumulative result of will and practice rather than a fixed, innate talent.
A major focus is vocal effectiveness. The book warns against monotony and teaches emphasis and subordination to highlight ideas. Chapters develop variation in pitch, pace, volume, and pause, showing how changes convey meaning and hold attention. Inflection is presented as a tool for expressing relationships and attitude, while silence—the purposeful pause—adds weight and clarity. Further sections cover resonance, breathing, and projection, followed by practical drills to strengthen articulation, enunciation, and accurate pronunciation. The aim is a flexible voice that serves thought and feeling, enabling the speaker to be understood easily, sustain interest, and convey significance without strain, affectation, or unnecessary effort.
Nonverbal expression receives sustained treatment. Gesture, facial expression, and posture should spring naturally from thought and emotion, avoiding mechanical movements or excessive flourish. The text advises economy, timing, and congruence between gesture and idea. Platform manner, eye contact, and the handling of notes contribute to credibility. Methods of delivery are compared: reading a manuscript, memorizing verbatim, impromptu speaking, and extemporaneous presentation from an outline. Extemporaneous delivery is favored for its balance of preparation and spontaneity, while acknowledging situations that require careful scripting. Guidance is given on choosing the method suited to purpose, audience, and occasion, and on rehearsing to support a clear, confident presence.
Preparation centers on gathering material and sharpening ideas. Readers are directed to read widely, observe keenly, and collect facts, examples, stories, and quotations aligned with their themes. The book recommends building a notebook of references and classifying material for ready use. Emphasis is placed on accurate data, concrete detail, and vivid illustration to make abstract concepts accessible. Choosing a definite theme and narrowing the subject guard against diffuseness. The authors encourage cultivation of a vigorous vocabulary and plain style, favoring short, direct words where possible. The goal is mastery of content that supports confidence, promotes clarity, and makes delivery natural rather than forced.
The work outlines a clear framework for composing speeches. A compelling introduction secures attention, establishes rapport, and states the purpose. The body develops a few main points in logical order, with transitions guiding listeners through the thought. Techniques for climax, proportion, and repetition are described to reinforce key ideas. Conclusions should be decisive, leaving a memorable impression or call to action. The book stresses unity, coherence, and emphasis, advising pruning of irrelevant material and arrangement of facts for impact. Practical outlines and exercises lead readers from rough notes to a shaped talk ready for rehearsal and effective delivery.
Chapters on the forms of discourse explain narration, description, exposition, and argument as tools for different aims. Narratives supply human interest and movement; description clarifies by appealing to the senses; exposition defines and explains; argument tests claims and evidence. Persuasive speaking is treated as moving the will, not merely the intellect, by joining conviction to motive. The text discusses suggestion, ethical emotional appeals, and the use of incentives, along with methods of refutation and debate. Figures of speech, illustration, and analogy are presented as aids to clarity and memorability when used sparingly and in service of the central idea.
Adapting to the audience and occasion is a recurring theme. Speakers are urged to analyze listeners’ interests, knowledge, and attitudes, shaping language, examples, and tone accordingly. Strategies for securing attention include questions, contrasts, and relevant stories. The book treats special forms—after-dinner remarks, commemorations, toasts, introductions, farewells, sales talks, and instructional talks—highlighting brevity, tact, and suitability. Guidance addresses timing, humor, and decorum, with caution against overuse of jokes. Ethical considerations emphasize sincerity, respect, and accuracy. While primarily focused on spoken words, the text also notes the value of illustrative examples and demonstrations when they clarify and enliven the message.
The unabridged edition embeds a training regimen in its end-of-chapter questions and assignments, urging repeated practice, self-critique, and participation in clubs or classes. Memory is cultivated through understanding, association, and frequent use rather than rote alone. Readers are guided to study notable passages, imitate strengths without mimicry, and gradually form an individual style. The closing emphasis is steady effort: effective speaking is a learned skill, founded on sound preparation, sincere purpose, and disciplined use of voice, gesture, and structure. The book’s central message is practical and encouraging—any earnest student can grow into a confident, clear, and persuasive speaker.
Historical Context
Dale Carnegie’s The Art of Public Speaking (Unabridged) emerged in the United States during the Progressive Era, with its first edition appearing in 1915 and associated with the adult-education and business-training milieu of New York City. Carnegie, who began teaching public speaking at the YMCA in Manhattan in 1912, shaped the manual from classroom practice. The volume was coauthored with editor-educator J. Berg Esenwein, reflecting a collaboration between practical instruction and rhetorical scholarship. Published for wide distribution in an age of civic clubs, lecture forums, and expanding correspondence schools, the book is situated amid rapid urban growth, reform politics, and the expanding white-collar workforce of early twentieth-century America.
The book is set against a bustling urban and institutional landscape: YMCA classrooms, settlement houses, churches, boardrooms, and municipal halls where citizens debated reform and businesspeople honed persuasive skills. In 1915, print was dominant, the lecture platform remained potent, and radio had not yet transformed mass communication. New York City’s dynamic immigrant neighborhoods and commercial avenues formed the practical backdrop for Carnegie’s pedagogy, while publication channels in Massachusetts and other hubs fed a national market. The time and place were characterized by faith in self-improvement, civic activism, and the conviction that articulate speech was essential to democratic participation and economic mobility.
Progressive Era politics, roughly 1890–1920, framed the demand for effective oratory. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), William Howard Taft (1909–1913), and Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) advanced antitrust measures, conservation, regulatory oversight, and political reforms like the Seventeenth Amendment (1913) for the direct election of senators. State-level initiatives, referenda, and recall expanded direct democracy. Reform required public hearings, campaigns, and advocacy before commissions—settings where persuasive speech mattered. Carnegie’s manual mirrored this climate by training ordinary citizens and professionals to present arguments clearly and ethically, and by modeling speeches that contributed to public deliberation rather than mere display.
The era’s massive immigration and urbanization created new audiences and needs for instruction. Between the 1880s and 1924, millions arrived through Ellis Island in New York Harbor, transforming cities such as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. By 1920, the United States became more urban than rural. Civic organizations and schools offered Americanization classes to help newcomers navigate language and public life. Carnegie’s classes drew clerks, salesmen, and immigrants seeking advancement, and his manual addressed pronunciation, confidence, and organization. The book’s emphasis on plain style and clear purpose suited a multilingual, heterogeneous city, where effective speech could bridge backgrounds in commerce and civic meetings.
The Chautauqua and Lyceum traditions formed the most direct cultural foundation for The Art of Public Speaking. The Lyceum movement, flourishing from the 1840s, brought lectures and debates to towns across the United States, cultivating habits of public discussion. In 1874, the Chautauqua Institution was founded on Lake Chautauqua, New York, as a summer school for teachers and lay learners. By the early twentieth century, traveling Chautauquas carried tent circuits nationwide, featuring reformers, politicians, educators, and entertainers. Figures such as William Jennings Bryan, Jane Addams, and Robert M. La Follette used these platforms to advocate economic, social, and political ideas to mass audiences outside major cities. The circuits encouraged memorization, extemporaneous delivery, and audience engagement—all elements emphasized by Carnegie. They also developed a market for anthologies of model speeches and for techniques that blended moral earnestness with practical instruction. Carnegie’s manual, with its exercises, study questions, and examples from historical oratory, reflects this culture of platform performance. It teaches the audience-centered approach and vocal presence that Chautauqua rewarded, while also systematizing skills for business and civic use. Crucially, the circuits democratized access to ideas: the tent platform functioned as a national classroom. Carnegie’s pedagogy—born in night classes and later codified in print—translated that democratic impulse into a reproducible syllabus suited to urban YMCAs, correspondence schools, and corporate training rooms. In this sense, the book consolidates decades of public-speaking practice developed in popular lecture venues, aligning traditional rhetorical precepts with the logistical needs and social purposes of early twentieth-century mass education.
The YMCA’s adult-education movement provided the institutional incubator for Carnegie’s approach. Founded in the United States in 1851, the YMCA expanded by the 1910s into urban centers offering night courses in English, bookkeeping, and public speaking for working adults. In 1912, Carnegie began teaching a speaking course in Manhattan that quickly attracted clerks, salesmen, and clerical workers seeking advancement. Classroom drills in impromptu speaking and confidence-building became the manual’s backbone. The partnership with a correspondence-school publisher enabled distribution beyond New York, extending the same pragmatic curriculum to readers and students who could not attend in-person classes.
The rise of corporate capitalism and the white-collar class, circa 1900–1920, created a practical demand for persuasive communication. Scientific management, associated with Frederick W. Taylor’s 1911 work, reorganized workplaces and emphasized efficiency, while national firms built sales forces and managerial hierarchies. Trade associations, chambers of commerce, and sales conventions multiplied opportunities for platform speaking. Carnegie’s manual addresses boardroom reports, sales talks, and committee presentations, adapting civic rhetoric to commercial settings. Its focus on audience analysis, clarity, and credibility matched the needs of a business culture that prized concise proposals and morale-building addresses to employees, investors, and clients.
Turn-of-the-century political oratory supplied models and cautionary tales. William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 Cross of Gold speech, Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 New Nationalism address in Osawatomie, Kansas, and Woodrow Wilson’s campaign speeches showcased persuasion shaping national debates over trust regulation, social welfare, and constitutional powers. Their tours relied on whistle-stop speeches and large outdoor meetings. The book’s examples and exercises draw on the canon of political eloquence to teach structure, force, and ethical appeal. It channels techniques associated with major campaign rhetoric while instructing readers to adapt them for civic clubs, juries, and professional audiences.
World War I transformed public communication through mobilization campaigns. In April 1917, President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information, which organized the Four Minute Men—volunteers who delivered brief speeches promoting Liberty Loans and wartime policies in theaters and public venues. This program emphasized succinct, emotionally resonant appeals tailored to local audiences. Carnegie’s emphasis on brevity, preparation, and audience engagement resonated with wartime speaking practices. Though the manual predates U.S. entry into the war, its methods aligned with the war’s demand for disciplined, ethical persuasion and supplied postwar readers with tools to navigate a public sphere newly conscious of propaganda.
The women’s suffrage movement culminated with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, after highly visible campaigns. The 1913 procession in Washington, D.C., organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, and the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s state-by-state lobbying relied on mass meetings and trained speakers. Rhetorical leadership by figures like Carrie Chapman Catt and Ida B. Wells-Barnett blended constitutional argument with narrative testimony. Carnegie’s manual, widely accessible to clubwomen and professionals, lent techniques for platform presence and argumentation. It mirrored the era’s recognition that public-speaking competence was indispensable to political enfranchisement and organizational leadership.
Labor conflict and free-speech battles also shaped the era’s oratory. The 1914 Ludlow Massacre in Colorado, the 1919 Seattle General Strike, and nationwide steel and coal strikes intensified debate about industrial democracy. The Industrial Workers of the World staged free-speech fights in Western cities between 1909 and 1913, contesting municipal limits on street speaking. Union halls, arbitration hearings, and picket-line rallies demanded persuasive, resilient rhetoric. Carnegie’s insistence on clear organization, sincerity, and control over nerves addressed the practical needs of speakers navigating hostile audiences, while his emphasis on ethical persuasion implicitly distinguished responsible advocacy from incitement.
The temperance and Prohibition movement leveraged mass oratory through churches and civic societies. The Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893 under leaders like Wayne Wheeler, coordinated speakers and campaigns that resulted in the Eighteenth Amendment’s ratification in 1919 and the Volstead Act’s enforcement starting in 1920. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, established in 1874, nurtured female speakers who framed temperance as social reform and public health. Carnegie’s manual aligns with this tradition by training speakers to adapt moral arguments to diverse audiences, to marshal facts with emotive appeal, and to maintain decorum—skills essential to temperance advocacy on local and national stages.
The expansion of public and extension education broadened rhetorical training. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created cooperative extension services that brought practical instruction to rural communities, while the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 funded vocational education. High-school enrollment more than doubled between 1900 and 1920, and correspondence schools such as the International Correspondence Schools in Scranton and publishers in Springfield, Massachusetts, distributed courses nationwide. The Art of Public Speaking functioned as a standardized text adaptable to classrooms and self-study. Its problem-centered exercises—outlining, voice control, extemporaneous practice—fit the pragmatic spirit of extension and vocational education.
The transition from platform to broadcast loomed as the book entered circulation. In 1920, station KDKA in Pittsburgh aired election returns, initiating U.S. commercial radio. By the mid-1920s, networks amplified political and educational speech into homes. Although Carnegie’s manual predates radio, its focus on concise structure, conversational tone, and vivid phrasing anticipated broadcasting’s constraints. The platform habits it codified—paced delivery, emphasis, audience orientation—translated to microphones and studio audiences, demonstrating how pre-radio rhetorical discipline underwrote the emerging mass-media environment.
The manual anchors its pedagogy in the Anglo-American civic oratory canon, drawing examples from figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, Patrick Henry, and Edmund Burke. Public commemorations of the Civil War and national holidays kept such speeches in circulation, reinforcing shared historical memory. By analyzing these addresses for organization, appeals, and diction, the book linked personal advancement to civic literacy. It taught readers to see speeches not as relics but as models adaptable to contemporary jury summations, city-council testimony, and fundraising appeals, thereby integrating national history into everyday public life.
As a social critique, the book democratizes access to rhetorical power traditionally reserved for the classically educated. By locating instruction in YMCA classrooms and affordable texts, it challenges elitism in civic leadership and professional advancement. Its insistence that confidence and clarity can be learned counters assumptions about innate oratory tied to class, gender, or ethnicity. The manual’s stress on sincerity and audience respect implicitly critiques demagoguery and manipulative propaganda. It advances a civic ethic in which persuasion is accountable to facts and public good, not merely to the speaker’s status or corporate backing.
The book also exposes tensions of the period: urban anonymity, immigrant integration, and workplace hierarchy. It equips readers to navigate class divides by mastering speech in boardrooms and community meetings, making participation in reform or negotiation feasible for non-elites. By emphasizing extemporaneous thinking over rote recitation, it challenges rigid schooling and invites practical intelligence into public forums. In a time of suffrage activism and labor unrest, its techniques empower marginalized voices to argue their case credibly. Thus it functions as both a toolkit and a critique, urging a broader, more equitable distribution of civic eloquence.
Author Biography
Dale Carnegie was an American writer, lecturer, and pioneer of adult education whose work reshaped ideas about public speaking, salesmanship, and interpersonal effectiveness in the early to mid-twentieth century. Best known for How to Win Friends and Influence People, he translated practical experience into accessible principles that bridged self-improvement and business training. Operating in an era of expanding mass media and corporate management, he framed communication as a learnable skill rather than a talent reserved for a few. His courses and books emphasized usable techniques, ethical persuasion, and confidence-building, helping countless participants navigate meetings, negotiations, and everyday conversations with greater clarity and poise.
Carnegie grew up in rural Missouri, a setting that foregrounded resourcefulness and self-reliance. He attended the State Teachers College in Warrensburg (now the University of Central Missouri), where he developed a serious interest in oratory and rhetoric. Exposure to debate and public performance cultivated habits of preparation, audience analysis, and clear expression that would later anchor his teaching. He was drawn to the era’s popular platforms for public address, absorbing lessons from traveling lecturers and civic forums. Rather than pursuing a purely academic path, he sought practical avenues where persuasive speaking, confidence, and relationship-building could translate into tangible professional opportunities.
After college, Carnegie worked as a traveling salesperson, an experience that sharpened his understanding of customer psychology and practical persuasion. Seeking opportunities in performance, he briefly pursued acting before concluding that his strengths lay in teaching others to speak with confidence. In the early 1910s he began leading public speaking classes at a New York YMCA, testing methods that emphasized practice, supportive critique, and real-world scenarios. These sessions evolved into structured courses in effective speaking and human relations, soon conducted beyond the YMCA. The growing demand for training led to a program bearing his name, refined through continual feedback from participants in varied professions.
Carnegie’s early publications distilled his classroom techniques into written guidance. The Art of Public Speaking, published in the mid-1910s with J. Berg Esenwein, offered a systematic approach to preparation, delivery, and audience engagement. He later broadened his interests with Lincoln the Unknown, a narrative work from the early 1930s that reflected his admiration for Abraham Lincoln’s perseverance and communication style. Across these works, Carnegie’s style was direct and example-driven, designed to help readers transfer ideas from the page to the podium. He favored practical exercises and memorable maxims, grounding public speaking in empathy, simplicity, and the disciplined practice of clear, confident expression.
How to Win Friends and Influence People, released in the mid-1930s, made Carnegie an international figure. The book proposed actionable principles—show genuine interest, listen actively, avoid needless criticism—that complemented his classroom approach. It became a publishing phenomenon, finding readers in business, public service, and everyday life, and it remained in print through numerous editions and translations. While some critics questioned whether its techniques could be misused, supporters emphasized its insistence on sincerity and respect. The book’s popularity accelerated the spread of Carnegie’s courses, integrating interpersonal skills into professional development and making human relations training a recognizable component of organizational life.
Carnegie continued refining his message in the late 1940s with How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, which focused on managing anxiety through practical routines, perspective, and purposeful action. He drew on case studies from course participants, illustrative anecdotes, and ideas from widely read thinkers, including strands of American pragmatism and classical rhetoric. Throughout his teaching and writing, he urged empathy, curiosity, and gratitude as foundations for influence, linking personal character to persuasive power. As business organizations expanded after World War II, his programs scaled accordingly, and the enterprise that carried his name professionalized a global network of instructors offering standardized training in communication and leadership.
Carnegie lectured and oversaw his courses into the early 1950s. He died in the mid-1950s, but the organization associated with him—later known widely as Dale Carnegie Training—continued to grow internationally. Posthumous works assembled from his course materials, notably The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking in the early 1960s, helped introduce new readers to his step-by-step approach. Today his ideas are staples of corporate training, sales education, and self-improvement literature. His books are read for their plainspoken practicality, ethical framing of persuasion, and persistent focus on listening and encouragement. The phrase “win friends and influence people” remains a concise marker of his enduring influence.
The Art Of Public Speaking (Unabridged)
THINGS TO THINK OF FIRST
A FOREWORD
The efficiency of a book is like that of a man, in one important respect: its attitude toward its subject is the first source of its power. A book may be full of good ideas well expressed, but if its writer views his subject from the wrong angle even his excellent advice may prove to be ineffective.
This book stands or falls by its authors' attitude toward its subject. If the best way to teach oneself or others to speak effectively in public is to fill the mind with rules, and to set up fixed standards for the interpretation of thought, the utterance of language, the making of gestures, and all the rest, then this book will be limited in value to such stray ideas throughout its pages as may prove helpful to the reader—as an effort to enforce a group of principles it must be reckoned a failure, because it is then untrue.
It is of some importance, therefore, to those who take up this volume with open mind that they should see clearly at the out-start what is the thought that at once underlies and is builded through this structure. In plain words it is this:
Training in public speaking is not a matter of externals—primarily; it is not a matter of imitation—fundamentally; it is not a matter of conformity to standards—at all. Public speaking is public utterance, public issuance, of the man himself; therefore the first thing both in time and in importance is that the man should be and think and feel things that are worthy of being given forth. Unless there be something of value within, no tricks of training can ever make of the talker anything more than a machine—albeit a highly perfected machine—for the delivery of other men's goods. So self-development is fundamental in our plan.
The second principle lies close to the first: The man must enthrone his will to rule over his thought, his feelings, and all his physical powers, so that the outer self may give perfect, unhampered expression to the inner. It is futile, we assert, to lay down systems of rules for voice culture, intonation, gesture, and what not, unless these two principles of having something to say and making the will sovereign have at least begun to make themselves felt in the life.
The third principle will, we surmise, arouse no dispute: No one can learn how to speak who does not first speak as best he can. That may seem like a vicious circle in statement, but it will bear examination.
Many teachers have begun with the how. Vain effort! It is an ancient truism that we learn to do by doing. The first thing for the beginner in public speaking is to speak—not to study voice and gesture and the rest. Once he has spoken he can improve himself by self-observation or according to the criticisms of those who hear.
But how shall he be able to criticise himself? Simply by finding out three things: What are the qualities which by common consent go to make up an effective speaker; by what means at least some of these qualities may be acquired; and what wrong habits of speech in himself work against his acquiring and using the qualities which he finds to be good.
Experience, then, is not only the best teacher, but the first and the last. But experience must be a dual thing—the experience of others must be used to supplement, correct and justify our own experience; in this way we shall become our own best critics only after we have trained ourselves in self-knowledge, the knowledge of what other minds think, and in the ability to judge ourselves by the standards we have come to believe are right. "If I ought," said Kant, "I can."
An examination of the contents of this volume will show how consistently these articles of faith have been declared, expounded, and illustrated. The student is urged to begin to speak at once of what he knows. Then he is given simple suggestions for self-control, with gradually increasing emphasis upon the power of the inner man over the outer. Next, the way to the rich storehouses of material is pointed out. And finally, all the while he is urged to speak, speak, SPEAK as he is applying to his own methods, in his own personal way, the principles he has gathered from his own experience and observation and the recorded experiences of others.
So now at the very first let it be as clear as light that methods are secondary matters; that the full mind, the warm heart, the dominant will are primary—and not only primary but paramount; for unless it be a full being that uses the methods it will be like dressing a wooden image in the clothes of a man.
J. BERG ESENWEIN.
NARBERTH, PA., JANUARY 1, 1915.
THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress'd as those that are full of precious Drugs.
They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.
—William Penn.
CHAPTER I
ACQUIRING CONFIDENCE BEFORE AN AUDIENCE
There is a strange sensation often experienced in the presence of an audience. It may proceed from the gaze of the many eyes that turn upon the speaker, especially if he permits himself to steadily return that gaze. Most speakers have been conscious of this in a nameless thrill, a real something, pervading the atmosphere, tangible, evanescent, indescribable. All writers have borne testimony to the power of a speaker's eye in impressing an audience. This influence which we are now considering is the reverse of that picture—the power their eyes may exert upon him, especially before he begins to speak: after the inward fires of oratory are fanned into flame the eyes of the audience lose all terror.—William Pittenger, Extempore Speech.
Students of public speaking continually ask, "How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?"
Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer's wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by?
How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines?
Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle and be "half scared to death." There are a great many "wetless" bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.
Practise, practise, PRACTISE in speaking before an audience will tend to remove all fear of audiences, just as practise in swimming will lead to confidence and facility in the water. You must learn to speak by speaking.
The Apostle Paul tells us that every man must work out his own salvation. All we can do here is to offer you suggestions as to how best to prepare for your plunge. The real plunge no one can take for you. A doctor may prescribe, but you must take the medicine.
Do not be disheartened if at first you suffer from stage-fright. Dan Patch was more susceptible to suffering than a superannuated dray horse would be. It never hurts a fool to appear before an audience, for his capacity is not a capacity for feeling. A blow that would kill a civilized man soon heals on a savage. The higher we go in the scale of life, the greater is the capacity for suffering.
For one reason or another, some master-speakers never entirely overcome stage-fright, but it will pay you to spare no pains to conquer it. Daniel Webster[1] failed in his first appearance and had to take his seat without finishing his speech because he was nervous. Gladstone was often troubled with self-consciousness in the beginning of an address. Beecher was always perturbed before talking in public.
Blacksmiths sometimes twist a rope tight around the nose of a horse, and by thus inflicting a little pain they distract his attention from the shoeing process. One way to get air out of a glass is to pour in water.
Be Absorbed by Your Subject
Apply the blacksmith's homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.
Self-consciousness is undue consciousness of self, and, for the purpose of delivery, self is secondary to your subject, not only in the opinion of the audience, but, if you are wise, in your own. To hold any other view is to regard yourself as an exhibit instead of as a messenger with a message worth delivering. Do you remember Elbert Hubbard's tremendous little tract, "A Message to Garcia"? The youth subordinated himself to the message he bore. So must you, by all the determination you can muster. It is sheer egotism to fill your mind with thoughts of self when a greater thing is there—TRUTH. Say this to yourself sternly, and shame your self-consciousness into quiescence. If the theater caught fire you could rush to the stage and shout directions to the audience without any self-consciousness, for the importance of what you were saying would drive all fear-thoughts out of your mind.
Far worse than self-consciousness through fear of doing poorly is self-consciousness through assumption of doing well. The first sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures us, you must "not look too good nor talk too wise."
Nothing advertises itself so thoroughly as conceit. One may be so full of self as to be empty. Voltaire said, "We must conceal self-love." But that can not be done. You know this to be true, for you have recognized overweening self-love in others. If you have it, others are seeing it in you. There are things in this world bigger than self, and in working for them self will be forgotten, or—what is better—remembered only so as to help us win toward higher things.
Have Something to Say
The trouble with many speakers is that they go before an audience with their minds a blank. It is no wonder that nature, abhorring a vacuum, fills them with the nearest thing handy, which generally happens to be, "I wonder if I am doing this right! How does my hair look? I know I shall fail." Their prophetic souls are sure to be right.
It is not enough to be absorbed by your subject—to acquire self-confidence you must have something in which to be confident. If you go before an audience without any preparation, or previous knowledge of your subject, you ought to be self-conscious—you ought to be ashamed to steal the time of your audience. Prepare yourself. Know what you are going to talk about, and, in general, how you are going to say it. Have the first few sentences worked out completely so that you may not be troubled in the beginning to find words. Know your subject better than your hearers know it, and you have nothing to fear.
After Preparing for Success, Expect It
Let your bearing be modestly confident, but most of all be modestly confident within. Over-confidence is bad, but to tolerate premonitions of failure is worse, for a bold man may win attention by his very bearing, while a rabbit-hearted coward invites disaster.
Humility is not the personal discount that we must offer in the presence of others—against this old interpretation there has been a most healthy modern reaction. True humility any man who thoroughly knows himself must feel; but it is not a humility that assumes a worm-like meekness; it is rather a strong, vibrant prayer for greater power for service—a prayer that Uriah Heep could never have uttered.
Washington Irving once introduced Charles Dickens at a dinner given in the latter's honor. In the middle of his speech Irving hesitated, became embarrassed, and sat down awkwardly. Turning to a friend beside him he remarked, "There, I told you I would fail, and I did."
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
Rid yourself of this I-am-a-poor-worm-in-the-dust idea. You are a god, with infinite capabilities. "All things are ready if the mind be so." The eagle looks the cloudless sun in the face.
Assume Mastery Over Your Audience
In public speech, as in electricity, there is a positive and a negative force. Either you or your audience are going to possess the positive factor. If you assume it you can almost invariably make it yours. If you assume the negative you are sure to be negative. Assuming a virtue or a vice vitalizes it. Summon all your power of self-direction, and remember that though your audience is infinitely more important than you, the truth is more important than both of you, because it is eternal. If your mind falters in its leadership the sword will drop from your hands. Your assumption of being able to instruct or lead or inspire a multitude or even a small group of people may appall you as being colossal impudence—as indeed it may be; but having once essayed to speak, be courageous. BE courageous—it lies within you to be what you will. MAKE yourself be calm and confident.
Reflect that your audience will not hurt you. If Beecher in Liverpool had spoken behind a wire screen he would have invited the audience to throw the over-ripe missiles with which they were loaded; but he was a man, confronted his hostile hearers fearlessly—and won them.
In facing your audience, pause a moment and look them over—a hundred chances to one they want you to succeed, for what man is so foolish as to spend his time, perhaps his money, in the hope that you will waste his investment by talking dully?
Concluding Hints
Do not make haste to begin—haste shows lack of control.
Do not apologize. It ought not to be necessary; and if it is, it will not help. Go straight ahead.
Take a deep breath, relax, and begin in a quiet conversational tone as though you were speaking to one large friend. You will not find it half so bad as you imagined; really, it is like taking a cold plunge: after you are in, the water is fine. In fact, having spoken a few times you will even anticipate the plunge with exhilaration. To stand before an audience and make them think your thoughts after you is one of the greatest pleasures you can ever know. Instead of fearing it, you ought to be as anxious as the fox hounds straining at their leashes, or the race horses tugging at their reins.
So cast out fear, for fear is cowardly—when it is not mastered. The bravest know fear, but they do not yield to it. Face your audience pluckily—if your knees quake, MAKE them stop. In your audience lies some victory for you and the cause you represent. Go win it. Suppose Charles Martell had been afraid to hammer the Saracen at Tours; suppose Columbus had feared to venture out into the unknown West; suppose our forefathers had been too timid to oppose the tyranny of George the Third; suppose that any man who ever did anything worth while had been a coward! The world owes its progress to the men who have dared, and you must dare to speak the effective word that is in your heart to speak—for often it requires courage to utter a single sentence. But remember that men erect no monuments and weave no laurels for those who fear to do what they can.
Is all this unsympathetic, do you say?
Man, what you need is not sympathy, but a push. No one doubts that temperament and nerves and illness and even praiseworthy modesty may, singly or combined, cause the speaker's cheek to blanch before an audience, but neither can any one doubt that coddling will magnify this weakness. The victory lies in a fearless frame of mind. Prof. Walter Dill Scott says: "Success or failure in business is caused more by mental attitude even than by mental capacity." Banish the fear-attitude; acquire the confident attitude. And remember that the only way to acquire it is—to acquire it.
In this foundation chapter we have tried to strike the tone of much that is to follow. Many of these ideas will be amplified and enforced in a more specific way; but through all these chapters on an art which Mr. Gladstone believed to be more powerful than the public press, the note of justifiable self-confidence must sound again and again.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What is the cause of self-consciousness?
2. Why are animals free from it?
3. What is your observation regarding self-consciousness in children?
4. Why are you free from it under the stress of unusual excitement?
5. How does moderate excitement affect you?
6. What are the two fundamental requisites for the acquiring of self-confidence? Which is the more important?
7. What effect does confidence on the part of the speaker have on the audience?
8. Write out a two-minute speech on "Confidence and Cowardice."
9. What effect do habits of thought have on confidence? In this connection read the chapter on "Right Thinking and Personality."
10. Write out very briefly any experience you may have had involving the teachings of this chapter.
11. Give a three-minute talk on "Stage-Fright," including a (kindly) imitation of two or more victims.
CHAPTER II
THE SIN OF MONOTONY
One day Ennui was born from Uniformity.—Motte.
Our English has changed with the years so that many words now connote more than they did originally. This is true of the word monotonous. From "having but one tone," it has come to mean more broadly, "lack of variation."
The monotonous speaker not only drones along in the same volume and pitch of tone but uses always the same emphasis, the same speed, the same thoughts—or dispenses with thought altogether.
Monotony, the cardinal and most common sin of the public speaker, is not a transgression—it is rather a sin of omission, for it consists in living up to the confession of the Prayer Book: "We have left undone those things we ought to have done."
Emerson says, "The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety." That is just what the monotonous speaker fails to do—he does not detach one thought or phrase from another, they are all expressed in the same manner.
To tell you that your speech is monotonous may mean very little to you, so let us look at the nature—and the curse—of monotony in other spheres of life, then we shall appreciate more fully how it will blight an otherwise good speech.
If the Victrola[2] in the adjoining apartment grinds out just three selections over and over again, it is pretty safe to assume that your neighbor has no other records. If a speaker uses only a few of his powers, it points very plainly to the fact that the rest of his powers are not developed. Monotony reveals our limitations.
In its effect on its victim, monotony is actually deadly—it will drive the bloom from the cheek and the lustre from the eye as quickly as sin, and often leads to viciousness. The worst punishment that human ingenuity has ever been able to invent is extreme monotony—solitary confinement. Lay a marble on the table and do nothing eighteen hours of the day but change that marble from one point to another and back again, and you will go insane if you continue long enough.
So this thing that shortens life, and is used as the most cruel of punishments in our prisons, is the thing that will destroy all the life and force of a speech. Avoid it as you would shun a deadly dull bore. The "idle rich" can have half-a-dozen homes, command all the varieties of foods gathered from the four corners of the earth, and sail for Africa or Alaska at their pleasure; but the poverty-stricken man must walk or take a street car—he does not have the choice of yacht, auto, or special train. He must spend the most of his life in labor and be content with the staples of the food-market. Monotony is poverty, whether in speech or in life. Strive to increase the variety of your speech as the business man labors to augment his wealth.
Bird-songs, forest glens, and mountains are not monotonous—it is the long rows of brown-stone fronts and the miles of paved streets that are so terribly same. Nature in her wealth gives us endless variety; man with his limitations is often monotonous. Get back to nature in your methods of speech-making.
The power of variety lies in its pleasure-giving quality. The great truths of the world have often been couched in fascinating stories—"Les Miserables," for instance. If you wish to teach or influence men, you must please them, first or last. Strike the same note on the piano over and over again. This will give you some idea of the displeasing, jarring effect monotony has on the ear. The dictionary defines "monotonous" as being synonymous with "wearisome." That is putting it mildly. It is maddening. The department-store prince does not disgust the public by playing only the one tune, "Come Buy My Wares!" He gives recitals on a $125,000 organ, and the pleased people naturally slip into a buying mood.
How to Conquer Monotony
We obviate monotony in dress by replenishing our wardrobes. We avoid monotony in speech by multiplying our powers of speech. We multiply our powers of speech by increasing our tools.
The carpenter has special implements with which to construct the several parts of a building. The organist has certain keys and stops which he manipulates to produce his harmonies and effects. In like manner the speaker has certain instruments and tools at his command by which he builds his argument, plays on the feelings, and guides the beliefs of his audience. To give you a conception of these instruments, and practical help in learning to use them, are the purposes of the immediately following chapters.
Why did not the Children of Israel whirl through the desert in limousines, and why did not Noah have moving-picture entertainments and talking machines on the Ark? The laws that enable us to operate an automobile, produce moving-pictures, or music on the Victrola, would have worked just as well then as they do today. It was ignorance of law that for ages deprived humanity of our modern conveniences. Many speakers still use ox-cart methods in their speech instead of employing automobile or overland-express methods. They are ignorant of laws that make for efficiency in speaking. Just to the extent that you regard and use the laws that we are about to examine and learn how to use will you have efficiency and force in your speaking; and just to the extent that you disregard them will your speaking be feeble and ineffective. We cannot impress too thoroughly upon you the necessity for a real working mastery of these principles. They are the very foundations of successful speaking. "Get your principles right," said Napoleon, "and the rest is a matter of detail."
It is useless to shoe a dead horse, and all the sound principles in Christendom will never make a live speech out of a dead one. So let it be understood that public speaking is not a matter of mastering a few dead rules; the most important law of public speech is the necessity for truth, force, feeling, and life. Forget all else, but not this.
When you have mastered the mechanics of speech outlined in the next few chapters you will no longer be troubled with monotony. The complete knowledge of these principles and the ability to apply them will give you great variety in your powers of expression. But they cannot be mastered and applied by thinking or reading about them—you must practise, practise, PRACTISE. If no one else will listen to you, listen to yourself—you must always be your own best critic, and the severest one of all.
The technical principles that we lay down in the following chapters are not arbitrary creations of our own. They are all founded on the practices that good speakers and actors adopt—either naturally and unconsciously or under instruction—in getting their effects.
It is useless to warn the student that he must be natural. To be natural may be to be monotonous. The little strawberry up in the arctics with a few tiny seeds and an acid tang is a natural berry, but it is not to be compared with the improved variety that we enjoy here. The dwarfed oak on the rocky hillside is natural, but a poor thing compared with the beautiful tree found in the rich, moist bottom lands. Be natural—but improve your natural gifts until you have approached the ideal, for we must strive after idealized nature, in fruit, tree, and speech.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What are the causes of monotony?
2. Cite some instances in nature.
3. Cite instances in man's daily life.
4. Describe some of the effects of monotony in both cases.
5. Read aloud some speech without paying particular attention to its meaning or force.
6. Now repeat it after you have thoroughly assimilated its matter and spirit. What difference do you notice in its rendition?
7. Why is monotony one of the worst as well as one of the most common faults of speakers?
CHAPTER III
EFFICIENCY THROUGH EMPHASIS AND SUBORDINATION
In a word, the principle of emphasis ... is followed best, not by remembering particular rules, but by being full of a particular feeling.—C.S. Baldwin[3], Writing and Speaking.
The gun that scatters too much does not bag the birds. The same principle applies to speech. The speaker that fires his force and emphasis at random into a sentence will not get results. Not every word is of special importance—therefore only certain words demand emphasis.
You say MassaCHUsetts and MinneAPolis, you do not emphasize each syllable alike, but hit the accented syllable with force and hurry over the unimportant ones. Now why do you not apply this principle in speaking a sentence? To some extent you do, in ordinary speech; but do you in public discourse? It is there that monotony caused by lack of emphasis is so painfully apparent.
So far as emphasis is concerned, you may consider the average sentence as just one big word, with the important word as the accented syllable. Note the following:
"Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice."
You might as well say MASS-A-CHU-SETTS, emphasizing every syllable equally, as to lay equal stress on each word in the foregoing sentences.
Speak it aloud and see. Of course you will want to emphasize destiny, for it is the principal idea in your declaration, and you will put some emphasis on not, else your hearers may think you are affirming that destiny is a matter of chance. By all means you must emphasize chance, for it is one of the two big ideas in the statement.
Another reason why chance takes emphasis is that it is contrasted with choice in the next sentence. Obviously, the author has contrasted these ideas purposely, so that they might be more emphatic, and here we see that contrast is one of the very first devices to gain emphasis.
As a public speaker you can assist this emphasis of contrast with your voice. If you say, "My horse is not black," what color immediately comes into mind? White, naturally, for that is the opposite of black. If you wish to bring out the thought that destiny is a matter of choice, you can do so more effectively by first saying that "DESTINY is NOT a matter of CHANCE." Is not the color of the horse impressed upon us more emphatically when you say, "My horse is NOT BLACK. He is WHITE" than it would be by hearing you assert merely that your horse is white?
In the second sentence of the statement there is only one important word—choice. It is the one word that positively defines the quality of the subject being discussed, and the author of those lines desired to bring it out emphatically, as he has shown by contrasting it with another idea. These lines, then, would read like this:
"DESTINY is NOT a matter of CHANCE. It is a matter of CHOICE." Now read this over, striking the words in capitals with a great deal of force.
In almost every sentence there are a few MOUNTAIN PEAK WORDS
