"You can make more friends in two months by becoming
interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other
people interested in you. Yet I know and you know people who blunder through
life trying to wigwag other people into becoming interested in them. Of course,
it doesn't work. People are not interested in you. They are not interested in
me. They are interested in themselves - morning, noon and after dinner.
If we merely try to impress people and get people interested
in us, we will never have many true, sincere friends. Friends, real friends,
are not made that way. Napoleon tried it, and in his last meeting with
Josephine he said: "Josephine, I have been as fortunate as any man ever
was on this earth; and yet, at this hour, you are the only person in the world
on whom I can rely." And historians doubt whether he could rely even on
her.
Alfred Adler, the famous Viennese psychologist, wrote a book
entitled What Life Should Mean to You. In that book he says: 'It is the
individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest
difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from
among such individuals that all human failures spring.'"
—Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends And Influence People