Zig Ziglar

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.

Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar (November 6 1926 – November 28 2012) was an American self-help author and speaker.

Quotes

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.

If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.

• You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
  • Secrets of Closing the Sale (1984)

• Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.
  • As quoted in Created for Excellence : 12 keys to Godly Success (1996) by Kevin Baerg, p. 25

• The world's most deadly disease is "hardening of the attitudes."
  • As quoted in Secrets of Superstar Speakers: Wisdom from the Greatest Motivators of Our Time (2000) by Lilly Walters, p. 96

• What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
  • As quoted in Secrets of Superstar Speakers: Wisdom from the Greatest Motivators of Our Time (2000) by Lilly Walters, p. 96

• The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.
  • As quoted in Refining Your Style : Learning from Respected Communicators (2004) by Dave Stone, p. 143

• 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.
  • As quoted in The Subconscious Diet : It's Not What You Put in Your Mouth; It Is What You Put in Your Mind (2005) by Hugh B. Sanders, p. 104

• Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.
  • As quoted in Trigger Events – How To Find Your Next Customer (2007) by Alen Majer, p. 22

• People who truly understand God's purpose for their lives know that we are called to be intimately involved with one another.
  • Better than Good: Creating a Life You Can't Wait to Live (2007)

• If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
  • As quoted in The Power of Respect : Benefit from the Most Forgotten Element of Success (2009) by Deborah Norville, p. 65

See You at the Top (2000)

A man or woman is seldom happy unless he or she is sustaining him or herself and making a contribution to others.

Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.

• The usual devastating put-downs imply that a person is basically bad, rather than that he is a person who sometimes does bad things. Obviously, there is a vast difference between a "bad" person and a person who does something bad.
  Besides, failure is an event, it is not a person — yesterday ended last night.
  • Variant: Failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.

• You might occasionally feel that some people are standing in the way and slowing your progress, but in reality the biggest person standing in your way is you. Others can stop you temporarily — you are the only one who can do it permanently.
  • p. 164

• Go so far as you can see and when you get there you will always be able to see farther. … as you head toward your goals, be prepared to make some slight adjustments to your course. You don't change your decision to go — you do change your direction to get there.
  • p. 164; Variant: When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.

• Fewer people are bent from hard work than are crooked from avoiding it.

• When you give a man a dole, you deny him his dignity, and when you deny him his dignity you rob him of his destiny.

• A man or woman is seldom happy unless he or she is sustaining him or herself and making a contribution to others.

• Failure has been correctly identified as the line of least persistence.

• Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.

• There is no such thing as a lazy person; he is either sick or uninspired.

• Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success.

• If you don't save something on your current income, you won't save anything on your future income.

• Happiness is not pleasure — it is victory.

Misattributed

• Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.
  • Ziglar has often used this saying, but it originates with Phillips Brooks, as quoted in ‪Primary Education‬ (1916) by Elizabeth Peabody.

• Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.
  • Though sometimes credited to Ziglar on the internet, this is credited to Marie Fraser in Quote Unquote (1977) by Lloyd Cory

Quotes about Ziglar

• Secrets of Closing the Sale, is essential reading. Ziglar tells us that selling and closing are not mysteries to be solved; instead they are as tangible as when his wife up-sold him on a new house.
  • Jack Covert, in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (2009) by Jack Covert, Todd Sattersten, p. 117