You Can’t Win an Argument

Part Three of the book — winning people to your way of thinking — opens with a principle that sounds like a paradox: the only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. You can't win an argument, Carnegie insisted, because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it too. Why? Because even if you demolish the other person's case, you have made them feel inferior, you have hurt their pride, and they will resent your triumph. A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.

He told of attending a banquet where the man beside him quoted a line as being from the Bible. Carnegie, sure the quote was from Shakespeare, corrected him; the man insisted. They appealed to Carnegie's friend Frank Gammond, a Shakespeare scholar — who kicked Carnegie under the table and said, "Dale, you are wrong. The gentleman is right." On the way home Gammond explained: "You were right, of course. But why prove it? He didn't ask your opinion. Why not let him save his face? Why try to win an argument? Always avoid the acute angle."

Carnegie quoted Benjamin Franklin, who as a young man was so argumentative that a Quaker friend took him aside and listed his faults: "You can't get along with anybody. Your opinions have a slap in them. You hurt people. Nobody knows more than you, and nobody is going to tell you anything because it isn't worth the effort." Franklin took the hard truth to heart, abandoned all dogmatic contradiction, and became one of the most diplomatic men in American history.

The deeper insight is that arguments almost never end with one party persuaded; they end with both parties more firmly convinced than ever that they are absolutely right. You cannot win, because in winning you lose the other person's goodwill — and goodwill is what you actually wanted. As Franklin put it, if you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes, but it will be an empty victory, because you will never get your opponent's goodwill.

What to do instead, when you feel an argument rising: welcome the disagreement (it may be a chance to be corrected before you make a serious mistake), distrust your first defensive reaction, control your temper, listen first, look for areas of agreement, be honest about where you might be wrong, and promise to think over the other person's ideas carefully. Postpone action to give both sides time to think; thank your opponents sincerely for their interest.

The application is to treat the urge to win an argument as a warning sign. When someone says something you think is wrong, the instinct to correct them on the spot is the instinct that costs you relationships. Hold it. Ask a question instead of issuing a contradiction. Let them save face. You will keep the relationship — and often, given time and dignity, the other person will come around to the truth on their own, which is the only way they ever really will.