Zig Ziglar

1926–2012 · American salesman, author & motivational speaker

Hilary Hinton ‘Zig’ Ziglar was an American salesman who turned the sales seminar into a mass-market genre, writing more than thirty books and founding Ziglar, Inc. in 1977. See You at the Top — published in 1974 under the title Biscuits, Fleas, and Pump Handles and renamed with its second edition the following year — became the perennial seller that fixed his reputation as America’s master motivator. He worked the same small handful of maxims for the rest of his life, and this is the one his company still runs on.

Traced to source

4 quotes we’ve traced to Zig Ziglar

“Failure is an event, not a person”

Verified

“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want”

Verified

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference”

Attributed

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

Disputed

Not actually Zig Ziglar

Often misattributed to Zig Ziglar

Famous lines widely pinned on Zig Ziglar that we’ve traced to someone else.

“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully”

actually Phillips Brooks

“It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting”

actually Anonymous (originator unknown)

“People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole”

actually Theodore Levitt

“There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic”

actually Jean Sibelius

“We cannot go back and start over, but we can begin now, and make a new ending”

actually James R. Sherman (earliest documented form)

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