"A goal properly set is halfway reached.""A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.""Building a better you is the first step to building a better America.""Every choice you make has an end result.""Every obnoxious act is a cry for help.""Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.""Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.""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.""If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.""If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.""If you don't see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner.""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.""If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost.""If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you'll never end up with a nag.""If you want to reach a goal, you must "see the reaching" in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.""It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.""It's not what you've got, it's what you use that makes a difference.""Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.""Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side.""Money isn't the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen on the "gotta have it" scale.""Money won't make you happy... but everybody wants to find out for themselves.""People don't buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.""People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.""Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.""Remember that failure is an event, not a person.""Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.""Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.""Success is dependent upon the glands - sweat glands.""Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.""The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.""The way you see people is the way you treat them.""When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you.""You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.""You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure.""You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.""You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations.""You do not pay the price of success, you enjoy the price of success.""You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.""Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude."
Zig Ziglar was born in Coffee County, Alabama to parents John Silas Ziglar and Viola Ziglar. He was the tenth of twelve children.
In 1931, when Ziglar was five years old, his father accepted a management position at a Mississippi farm, and his family moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, where he spent most of his early childhood. In 1932, his father died of a stroke, and his younger sister died two days later.
Ziglar served in the Navy during World War II (circa 1943 to 1945). He was in the Navy V-12 Navy College Training Program, attending the University of South Carolina.
On September 15, 1944, he met his wife, Jeane, at the YWCA in Jackson, Mississippi. He was 17 and she was 16. After dating for over two years she accepted his proposal and they were wed in late 1946.
Ziglar later worked as a salesman in a succession of companies, during which time his sales skills improved and his interest in motivational speaking grew.
In 1968, Ziglar became a vice president and training director for the Automotive Performance company, moving to Dallas, Texas.
In 1970, Ziglar went into the business of motivational speaking full-time. He often incorporates his strong Christian values into his enthusiastic speaking. Up until this final career change, he had gone by his given name, Hilary Ziglar. As more associates in the speaking and motivation business called him by the nickname, Zig, he decided to call himself Zig, and it stuck.
As of 2010, Ziglar still travels around taking part in motivational seminars despite a fall down a flight of stairs in 2007 that left him with short-term memory problems.
