John Dewey called it "the desire to be important" — the deepest urge in human nature. William James put it more directly: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." Sigmund Freud called it "the desire to be great." All three were pointing at the same thing: a need so fundamental that people will distort their behavior, sometimes catastrophically, to satisfy it.
Carnegie argued this drive is what separates humans from other animals — not intelligence or language, but the hunger for recognition. Hogs don't care about blue ribbons. His father did.
How far the hunger goes
The drive for a feeling of importance explains things that otherwise seem irrational. George Washington wanted to be called "His Mightiness, the President of the United States." Columbus pleaded for the title "Admiral of the Ocean and Viceroy of India." Catherine the Great refused to open letters not addressed to "Her Imperial Majesty." Shakespeare — already the most famous writer of his era — spent effort procuring a coat of arms for his family name.
Carnegie quotes a medical observation: some people "actually go insane in order to find, in the dreamland of insanity, the feeling of importance that has been denied them in the harsh world of reality." That's how starving this hunger can get.
It drives both greatness and destruction
The desire itself is morally neutral. What matters is how it gets satisfied. Lincoln, too poor to afford schoolbooks as a child, started studying law because something in him burned to be more than what the world said he was. Charles Dickens wrote novels. Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic. Marie Curie did life-threatening research on radioactivity. John D. Rockefeller built hospitals.
John Dillinger used the same hunger differently. When cornered in a farmhouse in Minnesota, he announced to FBI agents: "I'm Dillinger!" — proud to be Public Enemy Number One. The drive was the same. The expression was not.
Carnegie's formulation: "If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I'll tell you what you are. That determines your character."
Practical implications
This is the mechanism behind give-honest-and-sincere-appreciation and arouse-an-eager-want. If people are starving for a feeling of importance and you give it to them honestly — by noticing real effort, expressing genuine interest, letting them feel that their contribution matters — the resulting goodwill is real and durable.
The failure mode is flattery: generic, self-serving praise that the other person immediately sees through. Flattery doesn't satisfy the hunger because it isn't calibrated to them specifically. Genuine appreciation does — it names something real.
The hunger also explains why criticism-is-futile: criticism doesn't just fail to change behavior, it attacks the thing people need most. The person mobilizes everything they have to defend it.