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Who really said it

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic

Not Zig Ziglar — actually Jean Sibelius Jean Sibelius 1865–1957 · Finnish composer
The wording credited to Ziglar is a late variant of a remark Sibelius made before 1937. In copyright

The saying belongs to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, who told the young composer Bengt de Törne, “Remember, a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!” — recorded in de Törne’s memoir Sibelius: A Close-Up (1937), p. 27 ↗. Ziglar is credited with the smoothed-out modern wording, but Quote Investigator’s earliest citation for him is a 2004 newspaper quotation column ↗ — six decades after the line was already in circulation, and QI finds no earlier Ziglar source.

Last verified 14 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic” popularly credited to Zig Ziglar, but the saying originates with composer Jean Sibelius: "Remember, a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!" — recorded in Bengt de Törne, Sibelius: A Close-Up (London: Faber and Faber, 1937), p. 27. Ziglar's wording is documented only from 2004.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Zig Ziglar. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Bengt de Törne; Faber & Faber (London, 1937) and Houghton Mifflin (Boston, 1938)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Jean Sibelius — Finnish composer. Theme: "There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The primary source: a young composer’s afternoon with Sibelius

Work
Sibelius: A Close-Up
Author
Bengt de Törne, Finnish composer and Sibelius’s pupil, who recalls the exchange in the first person
First published
London: Faber and Faber, 1937 — passage at p. 27, Chapter II
Translation
None credited. The title page of the first US edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938) names no translator; the memoir was published in English.

‘Never pay any attention to what critics say,’ he proceeded, and expatiated on this theme. When I ventured to put in the remark that their articles might sometimes be of great importance, he cut me short. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!’ Chapter II

Transcribed from the scanned first US edition (Houghton Mifflin, 1938, printed in Great Britain). The scan’s page marker “26” falls immediately before this passage, corroborating the p. 27 citation given by both Quote Investigator and Wikiquote.

Scanned first US edition, 1938
Read the passage in the scanned book
Bengt de Törne, Sibelius: A Close-Up (1938 first US edition), p. 27 — full scan

How we verified this

  • 1937 — the origin. Bengt de Törne publishes Sibelius: A Close-Up ↗, recalling Sibelius cutting him short: “a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!” This is the earliest evidence known to Quote Investigator.
  • 1942 — into circulation. Columnist Walter Winchell prints “Don’t forget there has never been a statue set up in honor of a critic” in the Augusta Chronicle of 16 June 1942 — per Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗. The saying then drifts through decades of retellings.
  • 1986 — the modern wording appears. Anthony de Mello’s One Minute Wisdom is quoted as “No statue was ever erected to honor a critic” — the phrasing Ziglar’s version closely follows ↗.
  • 2004 — Ziglar attached. QI’s earliest Ziglar citation is the Las Vegas Review-Journal of 20 July 2004: “There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.” Meanwhile Wikiquote files the line under Sibelius with the de Törne citation ↗.
In copyright

The only record of this remark is de Törne’s memoir, first published in 1937 — well after the 1931 line, so the book remains in copyright in the United States. Sibelius spoke the words, but they survive only inside a copyrighted work: quoting the single sentence for provenance is ordinary critical citation, while the surrounding passage is not free to reproduce at length.

Fact-check

How a composer’s aside became a motivational poster

This is not a fabricated line — but neither is there evidence Ziglar coined it. The wording is documented from 2004, in a Las Vegas Review-Journal quotation column that credited him; QI finds no earlier Ziglar source and concludes only that he “may have helped to popularize” it. It is a credit error: a remark that had been circulating for sixty years arrived at the most quotable name attached to it and stopped there.

Zig Ziglar Popularizer, not originator

Quote Investigator’s earliest citation for Ziglar is the Las Vegas Review-Journal of 20 July 2004 — and QI concludes he “may have helped to popularize the remark, but it was already in circulation before it was attached to his name” (source ↗).

Anthony de Mello Also downstream

“No statue was ever erected to honor a critic” is quoted from de Mello’s One Minute Wisdom in 1986 — eighteen years before Ziglar’s version ↗, and itself half a century after Sibelius.

Martha Graham Independent retelling

Agnes De Mille’s 1952 memoir Dance to the Piper has Graham saying “They never raised a statue to a critic” — one of several mid-century restatements catalogued by QI ↗, none of them the origin.

Quote Investigator’s verdict is unambiguous: “QI believes that Jean Sibelius should be credited with the statement given in the earliest citation above. Zig Ziglar may have helped to popularize the remark, but it was already in circulation before it was attached to his name” (Quote Investigator, 4 August 2013 ↗).

Context

An aside to a nervous pupil — not a slogan

The line was never meant as motivational wall art. In de Törne’s telling it comes at the end of a long, unnervingly precise afternoon: Sibelius has just read the young man’s quintet, delivered what de Törne calls the most perspicacious psychological analysis he had ever heard, and then — his voice changing tone — offers one piece of advice. When the pupil timidly defends critics, the master cuts him off. It is a private, slightly imperious remark from a composer who had been both lionised and savaged in print, aimed at one anxious beginner.

The irony is that the claim is not even true. As the New Yorker music critic Alex Ross wrote on his blog in 2006 — quoted by Quote Investigator ↗ — readers pointed out that the Canadian artist Joe Fafard had made a statue of the critic Clement Greenberg, and that a statue of the literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve stands in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. What survived was not the fact but the flourish — which is exactly what made it portable enough to travel from a Finnish drawing room to a Broadway gossip column to a sales seminar.

“Remember, a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!”

Why the credit drifted to Ziglar

Sayings migrate toward the most quotable name in the largest room. Sibelius said it once, to one person, in a memoir that sold to classical-music readers. By 2004 the line was circulating under Ziglar’s name — and he was, per Wikipedia ↗, the author of more than thirty books and the founder of a training institute built on exactly this kind of compressed encouragement.

The wording drifted too, and the drift is traceable. Sibelius’s “set up in honour of” is British and slightly formal; by 1986 de Mello has “erected to honor,” and Ziglar’s 2004 version differs from de Mello’s only in its opening words. The modern quote reads like the end of a long polishing process rather than anything one person sat down and coined.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Courage Work

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: A Statue Has Never Been Set Up in Honour of a Criticquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: full chronology from Sibelius (1937) through Winchell, Martha Graham, de Mello and Ziglar (2004), with newspaper citations.
Jean Sibelius — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists the remark in its sourced Quotes section, citing de Törne, Sibelius: A Close-Up (Faber and Faber, 1937), p. 27.
Sibelius: A Close-Up (1937) — full scanarchive.org

The primary source itself. Scanned first US edition; the critic-and-statue exchange sits at page 27, in Chapter II.
Zig Ziglar quote investigationsquoteinvestigator.com

QI’s index of the nine sayings pinned on Ziglar — this one included. QI traces most of them to earlier speakers, though it credits Ziglar himself with originating at least one (“What you get by reaching your goals…”).
Jean Sibelius — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background on the composer (1865–1957): seven symphonies, Finlandia, the mixed reviews of the Fourth Symphony, and the long silence of Järvenpää.
Zig Ziglar — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Background on the motivational speaker (1926–2012), author of See You at the Top, whose platform carried the line to a mass audience.

The man who actually said it

Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius

1865–1957 · Finnish composer

Jean Sibelius was Finland’s preeminent composer, whose seven symphonies and thirteen tone poems — above all Finlandia — helped forge a national identity under Russian political pressure. He knew the critics’ sting first-hand: his Fourth Symphony drew mixed reviews at its premiere, and works dismissed in one city triumphed in another. He produced no major work after 1926 and fell into the three-decade quiet known as the “silence of Järvenpää”; when he died in 1957 the UN General Assembly paused for him.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Törne, Bengt de. Sibelius: A Close-Up. London: Faber and Faber, 1937, p. 27. (First US edition: Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938.) Chronology of the saying’s later variants, including Zig Ziglar’s 2004 wording, per Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: A Statue Has Never Been Set Up in Honour of a Critic,” 4 August 2013.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic’?” Last verified 14 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/there-has-never-been-a-statue-erected-to-honor-a-critic

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