Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) was an American motivational consultant, author, and Christian public speaker renowned for his energy, optimism, and plain-spoken style. His recipe, “The Ziglar Way,” blended homespun wit, sound-bite positivity, and Christian faith to urge people to appreciate the bright side of life.
Ziglar was born in Coffee County in southeastern Alabama. His self-improvement seminars and over thirty books attracted millions of devoted followers to Ziglar’s advice on personal growth, faith, moral strength, character, leadership, and sales.
Ziglar’s bestselling books include See You at the Top (1975,) Secrets of Closing the Sale (1982,) Top Performance: How to Develop Excellence in Yourself and Others (1986,) Success for Dummies (1998,) and Selling 101 (2003.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Zig Ziglar
Failure is an event, never a person; an attitude not an outcome.
—Zig Ziglar
It’s your aptitude, not just your attitude that determines your ultimate altitude.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success & Failure, Achievement
Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Failure
The more you express gratitude for what you have the more you will have to express gratitude for.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Attitude
People who build hope into their own lives and who share hope with others become powerful people.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Hope
People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.
—Zig Ziglar
A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.
—Zig Ziglar
You can have everything in life you want if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success, People, Leadership
Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Ability, Success, Success & Failure
When obstacles arise change your direction to reach your goal, not the decision to get there.
—Zig Ziglar
People buy what they want when they want it more than the money it costs.
—Zig Ziglar
If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Defeat
You are free to choose, but the choices you make today will determine what you will have, be and do in the tomorrow of your life.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Responsibility
When your image improves, your performance improves.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Ability
Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
Money won’t make you happy, but everybody wants to find out for themselves.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success, Money
You build a successful career, regardless of your field of endeavor, by the dozens of little things you do on and off the job.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
Success is in the details.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
Ability is important in our quest for success, but dependability is critical.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Ability
The price of success is much lower than the price of failure.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Attitude, Thinking, Entrepreneurs, Optimism
People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Family
There’s often no way you can look into the game of life and determine whether or not you’ll get that big break tomorrow or whether it will take another week, month, year or even longer. But it will come!
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Perseverance
The only way to coast is downhill.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Ambition
People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Motivation
When you set goals, something inside of you starts Saying, “Let’s go, let’s go,” and ceilings start to move up.
—Zig Ziglar
You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.
—Zig Ziglar
When you develop a game plan to get what you want, you will develop a belief that you can get it.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Goals
Remember, you can earn more money, but when time is spent is gone forever.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
Individuals score points, but teams win games.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Cooperation
You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Attitude
Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Money
When you forgive somebody else you accept the responsibility for your own future.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Forgiveness
Success is dependent upon the glands — sweat glands.
—Zig Ziglar
Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Vision, People
You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Failure, Success, Attitude
A goal properly set is halfway reached.
—Zig Ziglar
Have you ever noticed that people who are the problem never realize it? They’re in denial. They think denial is a river in Egypt!
—Zig Ziglar
I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
Motivation is the fuel necessary to keep the human engine running.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Motivation
We all need a daily check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Attitude
It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Commitment, Ambition
When someone we love is having difficulty and is giving us a bad time, it’s better to explore the cause than to criticize the action.
—Zig Ziglar
For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Enthusiasm, Business
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
—Zig Ziglar
Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Effort, Winners, Winning
If you don’t see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Performance, Winning, Expectation, Winners
Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.
—Zig Ziglar
If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Friends and Friendship
You can’t hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Goals
Be firm on principle but flexible on method.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: One liners
Our children are our only hope for the future, but we are their only hope for their present and their future.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Future, Hope
You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Greatness & Great Things
There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Ambition, Persistence, Kindness
What comes out of your mouth is determined by what goes into your mind.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Attitude
The door to a balanced success opens widest on the hinges of hope and encouragement.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
When we do more than we are paid to do, eventually we will be paid more for what we do.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Ambition
You are at the top when you’ve made friends with the past, are focused on the present, and optimistic about your future. … .
—Zig Ziglar
If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: God
Obstacles are the things we see when we take our eyes off our goals.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Ambition
Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Weddings, Planning
If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Goals, Vision
Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph, Success is a personal standard — reaching for the highest that is in us — becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success, One liners, Ability, Success & Failure
Success is like a ladder, and no one has ever climbed a ladder with their hands in their pockets.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
Remember that failure is an event, not a person.
—Zig Ziglar
Obviously, there is little you can learn from doing nothing.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Ambition, Action
Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.
—Zig Ziglar
Discipline yourself to do the things you need to do when you need to do them, and the day will come when you will be able to do the things you want to do when you want to do them!
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Discipline
You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
—Zig Ziglar
Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you.
—Zig Ziglar
You cannot consistently perform in a manner which is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Confidence
Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Criticism
Man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Success
Positive thinking won’t let you do anything but it will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Optimism
Of all the “attitudes” we can acquire, surely the attitude of gratitude is the most important and by far the most life-changing.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Attitude
The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won’t work—if you won’t.
—Zig Ziglar
Topics: Work
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