161 Zig Ziglar Quotes: Powerful Lines on Success, Attitude & Life

Zig Ziglar Quotes on Success & Winning

1. You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win. — Zig Ziglar
2. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. — Zig Ziglar
3. You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure. — Zig Ziglar
4. Success is dependent upon the glands – sweat glands. — Zig Ziglar
5. Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation. — Zig Ziglar
6. The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job. — Zig Ziglar
7. You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness. — Zig Ziglar
8. Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there. — Zig Ziglar
9. The difference between try and triumph is a little 'umph'. — Zig Ziglar
10. Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success. — Zig Ziglar
11. 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
12. Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment. — Zig Ziglar
13. If you don't see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner. — Zig Ziglar
14. If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you. — Zig Ziglar
15. Winners are not people who never fail, but people who never quit. — Zig Ziglar
16. Stop selling. Start helping. — Zig Ziglar
17. True success has more to do with giving than getting. — Zig Ziglar
18. I recognize that winning is not everything, but the effort to win is. — Zig Ziglar
19. Success must never be measured by how much money you have. — Zig Ziglar
20. 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. — Zig Ziglar
21. Success is in the details. — Zig Ziglar
22. You don't pay the price for success, you pay the price for failure. — Zig Ziglar
23. Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful. — Zig Ziglar
24. Desire is the catalyst that enables a person with average ability to compete and win against others with more natural talent. — Zig Ziglar
25. Success Procedure: Run your day by the clock and your life with a vision. — Zig Ziglar
26. You do not pay the price of success. You enjoy the price of success. — Zig Ziglar
27. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have. — Zig Ziglar

On Attitude & Positive Thinking

1. Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude. — Zig Ziglar
2. Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. — Zig Ziglar
3. You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations. — Zig Ziglar
4. It's not the situation, but whether we react negative or respond positive to the situation that is important. — Zig Ziglar
5. You are what you are and you are where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You change what you are and you change where you are by changing what goes into your mind. — Zig Ziglar
6. You can change everything about your business and your life by changing your thinking about it. — Zig Ziglar
7. It's not what you've got, it's what you use that makes a difference. — Zig Ziglar
8. A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could. — Zig Ziglar
9. You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. — Zig Ziglar
10. 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
11. Don't let the mistakes and disappointments of the past control and direct your future. — Zig Ziglar
12. When you catch a glimpse of your potential, that's when passion is born. — Zig Ziglar
13. The best way to raise positive children in a negative world is to have positive parents who love them unconditionally. — Zig Ziglar
14. The greatest good we can do for others is not just to share our riches with them, but to reveal theirs. — Zig Ziglar
15. Don't judge me by my past. I don't live there anymore. — Zig Ziglar
16. Optimism is being exposed to the worst, but expecting the best. — Zig Ziglar
17. What comes out of your mouth is determined by what goes into your mind. — Zig Ziglar
18. The way you see your future determines your thinking today. Your thinking today determines your performance today. — Zig Ziglar
19. You can succeed at almost anything for which you have unbridled enthusiasm. — Zig Ziglar

On Goals, Direction & Dreams

1. What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. — Zig Ziglar
2. Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission. — Zig Ziglar
3. Don't let someone who gave up on their dreams talk you out of going after yours. — Zig Ziglar
4. If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. — Zig Ziglar
5. A goal properly set is halfway reached. — Zig Ziglar
6. Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too. — Zig Ziglar
7. Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another. — Zig Ziglar
8. Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days. — Zig Ziglar
9. When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there. — Zig Ziglar
10. There are no traffic jams on the extra mile. — Zig Ziglar
11. Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see further. — Zig Ziglar
12. I opened two gifts this morning. They were my eyes. — Zig Ziglar
13. Do more, give more, try harder, aim higher, and give thanks. The rewards will be yours. — Zig Ziglar
14. Setting goals helps bring your future into your present and the present is the only time we can take action. — Zig Ziglar
15. Surround yourself with those who see greatness within you, even when you don't see it yourself! — Zig Ziglar
16. Set a goal so big that you can't achieve it until you grow into the person who can. — Zig Ziglar
17. Obstacles are the things we see when we take our eyes off our goals. — Zig Ziglar
18. Planning has to be based on getting a clear vision of what you want, because without a vision you don't know which goals to set. — Zig Ziglar

On Motivation & Taking Action

1. Where you start is not as important as where you finish. — Zig Ziglar
2. It's not where you start or where you finish. It is the distance between the two. — Zig Ziglar
3. 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. — Zig Ziglar
4. There is little you can learn from doing nothing. — Zig Ziglar
5. Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you. — Zig Ziglar
6. 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
7. 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
8. You can start where you are with what you've got and go to wherever it is you want to go. — Zig Ziglar
9. People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing – that's why we recommend it daily. — Zig Ziglar
10. You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. — Zig Ziglar
11. The best motivation is self-motivation. — Zig Ziglar
12. Motivation gets you going and habit keeps you going. — Zig Ziglar
13. Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis. — Zig Ziglar
14. When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you. — Zig Ziglar
15. When you choose a habit, you also choose the end of that habit. — Zig Ziglar
16. Action often precedes the feeling. — Zig Ziglar
17. When you make people feel important, you're going to be ahead of the game. — Zig Ziglar
18. It's not the qualities you have, it's the quality that you recognise and use that make the difference. — Zig Ziglar

On Failure, Fear & Perseverance

1. It's not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts. — Zig Ziglar
2. The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do a little. — Zig Ziglar
3. The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist. — Zig Ziglar
4. When you do more than you're paid for, eventually you'll be paid for more than you do. — Zig Ziglar
5. Money isn't the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen on the 'gotta have it' scale. — Zig Ziglar
6. The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now. — Zig Ziglar
7. Remember that failure is an event, not a person. — Zig Ziglar
8. If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost. — Zig Ziglar
9. Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street. — Zig Ziglar
10. You must manage yourself before you can lead someone else. — Zig Ziglar
11. You don't drown by falling in water; you drown by staying there. — Zig Ziglar
12. Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations. The best is yet to come. — Zig Ziglar
13. Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they've never failed to imitate them. — Zig Ziglar
14. You might not be what you say you are, but what you say, you are. — Zig Ziglar
15. Each failure brings you one step closer to success. — Zig Ziglar
16. Failure doesn't come from falling down, failure comes from not getting up. — Zig Ziglar
17. I've got to say no to the good so I can say yes to the best. — Zig Ziglar
18. One of the main reasons people fail to reach their full potential is because they are unwilling to risk anything. — Zig Ziglar

On Selling, Business & Work

1. Your business is never really good or bad 'out there.' Your business is either good or bad right between your own two ears. — Zig Ziglar
2. Money will buy you a bed but not sleep; books but not brains; food but not appetite; finery but not beauty; a house but not a home; medicine but not health; luxuries but not culture; amusements but not happiness; religion but not salvation; a passport to everywhere but heaven. — Zig Ziglar
3. What you do off the job is the determining factor in how far you will go on the job. — Zig Ziglar
4. Selling is essentially a transfer of feelings. — Zig Ziglar
5. Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. — Zig Ziglar
6. People don't buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons. — Zig Ziglar
7. People buy on emotion and justify with logic. — Zig Ziglar
8. Timid salesmen have skinny kids. — Zig Ziglar
9. I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don't hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales. — Zig Ziglar
10. If people like you they'll listen to you, but if they trust you they'll do business with you. — Zig Ziglar
11. The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself. — Zig Ziglar
12. The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay. — Zig Ziglar
13. A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can. — Zig Ziglar
14. By the mile it's a trial, but by the inch it's a cinch. — Zig Ziglar
15. The only way to coast is downhill. — Zig Ziglar
16. Remember, you can earn more money, but when time is spent it is gone forever. — Zig Ziglar
17. Selling is more than a profession; it is a way of life. — Zig Ziglar
18. Some prospects will tell you the true objection, and some prospects will not know the true objection. — Zig Ziglar

On Character, Integrity & Trust

1. The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty. — Zig Ziglar
2. Yesterday ended last night. — Zig Ziglar
3. You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself. — Zig Ziglar
4. If you don't like who you are and where you are, don't worry about it because you're not stuck either with who you are or where you are. You can grow. — Zig Ziglar
5. Some people find fault like there is a reward for it. — Zig Ziglar
6. The way you see people is the way you treat them. — Zig Ziglar
7. Every choice you make has an end result. — Zig Ziglar
8. F-E-A-R has two meanings: 'Forget Everything And Run' or 'Face Everything And Rise.' The choice is yours. — Zig Ziglar
9. Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs. — Zig Ziglar
10. The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity. — Zig Ziglar
11. Logic makes you think. Emotion makes you act. — Zig Ziglar
12. Honesty and integrity are absolutely essential for success in life – all areas of life. — Zig Ziglar
13. You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life. — Zig Ziglar
14. Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared, but only men of character are trusted. — Zig Ziglar
15. Trust is the byproduct of integrity. — Zig Ziglar
16. Wherever you are there you are! — Zig Ziglar
17. A clear rejection is always better than a fake promise. — Zig Ziglar
18. You have to be before you can do, and do before you can have. — Zig Ziglar

On Family, Gratitude & Life Wisdom

1. Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves – to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our todays. — Zig Ziglar
2. Getting knocked down in life is a given. Getting up and moving forward is a choice. — Zig Ziglar
3. Make today worth remembering. — Zig Ziglar
4. It's not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it is how you handle what happens to you. — Zig Ziglar
5. Life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. — Zig Ziglar
6. Be helpful. When you see a person without a smile, give him yours. — Zig Ziglar
7. If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your major objective, standard of living invariably improves. — Zig Ziglar
8. Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully. — Zig Ziglar
9. If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you'll never end up with a nag. — Zig Ziglar
10. Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they are on the same side. — Zig Ziglar
11. Kids go where there is excitement. They stay where there is love. — Zig Ziglar
12. When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world. — Zig Ziglar
13. 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
14. Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart. — Zig Ziglar
15. Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. — Zig Ziglar
16. The greatest source of happiness is the ability to be grateful at all times. — Zig Ziglar
17. You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. — Zig Ziglar
18. Children spell love T-I-M-E. — Zig Ziglar
19. Most people stand on the dock of life waiting for their ship to come in when deep down inside they know it has never left port. — Zig Ziglar
20. Will you look back on life and say, 'I wish I had,' or 'I'm glad I did'? — Zig Ziglar
21. Happiness is like a kiss, in order to get any good out of it, you have to give it to someone else. — Zig Ziglar
22. Sometimes we all need a check up from the neck up! — Zig Ziglar
23. If there is faith in the future, there is power in the present. — Zig Ziglar
24. In the game of life, before you get anything out, you must put something in! — Zig Ziglar
25. It has been my observation that in every field of endeavor the men and women who reach the mountaintops of life have a passion to give their all. — Zig Ziglar

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Zig Ziglar?

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) was an American author, salesman, and motivational speaker. His first book, See You at the Top (1975), rejected by dozens of publishers, went on to sell over 250,000 copies and launched a career spanning more than 30 books.

What is Zig Ziglar’s most famous quote?

His most quoted line is: “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Other classics include “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude” and “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”

What did Zig Ziglar say about motivation?

His classic take: “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” He taught that motivation gets you going, but habit and discipline keep you going.

Are these Zig Ziglar quotes free to use?

These short excerpts are presented for inspiration and education. Zig Ziglar’s works remain under copyright (he passed away in 2012), so for commercial use, please consult the Ziglar estate or publisher.

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