Author Don Miguel Ruiz is the best-selling author of the self-help book The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. The book offers a code of conduct that promotes freedom from self-limiting beliefs that might result in suffering and limitations in a person’s life. It claims to be based on ancient Toltec wisdom.
The book, which was first published in 1997, has been translated into 48 different languages and has sold over 12 million copies in the US alone. Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of the book on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2001 and again on the television program in 2013 helped the book gain popularity. The book spent more than ten years as a bestseller in the New York Times.
The Four Agreements Quotes
- “There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.”
2. “Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.”
3. “Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”
4. “Go inside and listen to your body, because your body will never lie to you.”
5. “Be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best.”
6. “Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive. This leads to self pity, suffering and tears”
7. “You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward”
8. “You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.”
9. “Don’t take anything personally because by taking things personally you set yourself up to suffer for nothing.”
10. “Suffering makes you feel safe because you know it so well.”
11. “I will no longer allow anyone to manipulate my mind and control my life in the name of love.”
12. “Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”
13. “If you are impeccable with your word, if you don’t take anything personally, if you don’t make assumptions, if you always do your best, then you are going to have a beautiful life.”
The four agreements Quotes About Forgiveness
14. “When someone can touch what used to be a wound and it no longer hurts you, then you know you have truly forgiven.”
15. “Forgiveness is the only way to heal. We can choose to forgive because we feel compassion for ourselves.”
16. “People who love us do black magic on us, but they don’t know what they do. That is why we must forgive them; they don’t know what they do.”
17. “We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much we don’t want to keep paying for the injustice.”
18. “The fear of being rejected becomes the fear of not being good enough. Eventually we become someone that we are not.”
19. “Once you forgive yourself, the self-rejection in your mind is over. Self-acceptance begins, and the self-love will grow so strong that you will finally accept yourself just the way you are. That’s the beginning of the free human. Forgiveness is the key.”
20. “We cannot forgive ourselves for not being perfect.”
21. “Maybe we cannot escape from the destiny of the human, but we have a choice: to suffer our destiny or to enjoy our destiny.”
22. “Humans hardly know what they want, how they want it, or when they want it.”
Best Quotes From The Four Agreements
23. “True justice is paying only once for each mistake. True injustice is paying more than once for each mistake.”
24. “You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others.”
25. “The big diffrence between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses and the warrior refrains.”
26. “Their addiction to suffering is nothing but an agreement that is reinforced every day.”
27. “Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama.”
28. “Self-rejection is the biggest sin that you commit”
29. “Ninety-five percent of the beliefs we have stored in our minds are nothing but lies, and we suffer because we believe all these lies.”
30. “I am awake, I see the sun. I am going to give my gratitude to the sun and to everything and everyone because I am still alive. One more day to be myself.”
31. “We are on an eternal search for the truth because we only believe in the lies we have stored in our mind.”
32. “If you want to live a life of joy and fulfillment, you have to find the courage to break those agreements that are fear-based and claim your personal power.”
33. “Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.”
34. “We judge others according to our image of perfection as well, and naturally they fall short of our expectations.”
35. “If you live in a past dream, you don’t enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is. There is no time to miss anyone or anything because you are alive.”
36. “Just your existence proves the existence of God.”
37. “But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way I can take this personally.”
38. “You are never responsible for the actions of others; you are only responsible for you.”
39. “By making this one agreement a habit, your whole life will be completely transformed.”
40. “Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive. This leads to self-pity, suffering, and tears.”
41. “True freedom has to do with the human spirit — it is the freedom to be who we really are.”
42. “Who stops us from being free? We blame the government, we blame the weather, we blame our parents, we blame religion, we blame God. Who really stops us from being free? We stop ourselves.”
Inspiring Quotes From The Four Agreements
43. “We learn to dream hell in our own life, in our personal dream.”
44. “Humans are dreaming all the time.”
45. “It is when we lose control that we repress the emotions, not when we are in control.”
46. “If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you.”
47. “First is the Mastery of Awareness. This is to be aware of who we really are, with all the possibilities.”
48. “You can be loving all the time. This is your choice. You may not have a reason to love, but you can love because love makes you so happy. Love in action only produces happiness.”
49. “The way we judge ourselves is the worst judge that ever existed.”
50. “Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.”
51. “We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do.”
52. “Be impeccable with your word.”
Motivational Quotes From The Book The Four Agreements
53. “It is very interesting how the human mind works. We have the need to justify everything, to explain and understand everything, in order to feel safe.”
54. “Gossiping has become the main form of communication in human society. It has become the way we feel close to each other, because it makes us feel better to see someone else feel as badly as we do.”
55. “Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.”
56. “Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy; it means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself.”
57. “The fourth agreement is about the action of the first three: Always do your best.”
58. “Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourslef or to gossip about others. Use your power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”
59. “if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly. If”
60. “Taking the action over and over again strengthens your will, nurtures the seed, and establishes a solid foundation for the new habit to grow.”
61. “You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.”
62. “Your word is the power that you have to create. Your word is the gift that comes directly from God.”
63. “Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next.”
64. “When we believe something, we assume we are right about it to the point that we will destroy relationships in order to defend our position.”
The Four Agreements Book Quotes
65. “If others say one thing, but do another, you are lying to yourself if you don’t listen to their actions.”
66. “We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.”
67. “If others change, it’s because they want to change, not because you can change them.”
68. “The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word.”
69. “That is why we need a great deal of courage to challenge our own beliefs.”
70. “Taking things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians.”
71. “Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves.”
72. “Humans punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believe they should be. They become very self-abusive, and they use other people to abuse themselves as well.”
73. “We pretend to be what we are not because we are afraid of being rejected.”
74. “Suffering makes you feel safe because you know it so well. But there is really no reason to suffer. The only reason you suffer is because you choose to suffer.”
Don Miguel Ruiz The Four Agreements Quotes
75. “Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them. If we try to change them, this means we don’t really like them.”
76. “You plant a seed, a thought, and it grows. The word is like a seed, and the human mind is so fertile! The only problem is that too often it is fertile for the seeds of fear.”
77. “Our normal human tendency is to enjoy life, to play, to explore, to be happy, and to love.”
78. “We don’t need to know or prove anything. Just to be, to take a risk and enjoy your life, is all that matters.”
79. “We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.”
80. “In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself.”
81. “The resurrection is to be like a child, but with a difference. The difference is that we have freedom with wisdom instead of innocence.”
82. “We are born with the capacity to learn how to dream, and the humans who live before us teach us how to dream the way society dreams.”
83. “The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real.”
84. “You are no longer responsible for anyone’s opinion.”
85. “Life can be very easy when love is your way of life. You can be loving all the time. This is your choice. You may not have a reason to love, but you can love because to love makes you so happy.”
86. “We pretend to be what we are not because we are afraid of being rejected. The fear of being rejected becomes the fear of not being good enough.”
The Four Agreements Quotes About Life and Fear
87. “Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive”
88. “Then, if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself. I am the excuse for you to get mad.”
89. “Very young children are not afraid to express what they feel. They are so loving that if they perceive love, they melt into love. They are not afraid to love at all. That is the description of a normal human being.”
90. “Then you can be in the middle of hell and still experience inner peace and happiness.”
91. “When we fulfill any need of the human body, it gives us pleasure. To breathe gives us much pleasure.”
92. “There are many ways that we hurt ourselves when we don’t like who we are.”
93. “If you live in a past dream, you don’t enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is.”
94. “Write this agreement on paper, and put it on your refrigerator to remind you all the time: Don’t take anything personally.”
95. “Your mind is a dream where a thousand people talk at the same time, and nobody understands each other.”
96. “You are alive, so take your life and enjoy it. Don’t resist life passing through you, because that is God passing through you. Just your existence proves the existence of God. Your existence proves the existence of life and energy.”
97. “All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally.”
98. “We don’t see the truth because we are blind. What blinds us are all those false beliefs we have in our mind.”
99. “When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts.”
100. “Even moral laws like the Ten Commandments are programmed into our mind in the process of domestication”
More Great Quotes from The Four Agreements Quotes
101. “Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you’re expecting a reward.”
102. “Imagine living without the fear of loving and not being loved. You are no longer afraid to be rejected, and you don’t have the need to be accepted.”
103. “Learning from your mistakes means you practice, look honestly at the results, and keep practicing. This increases your awareness.”
104. “Humans agree to help each other suffer. If you have the need to be abused, you will find it easy to be abused by others.”
105. “If you break an agreement, begin again tomorrow, and again the next day.”
106. “We have the need to be right and to make others wrong. We trust what we believe, and our beliefs set us up for suffering.”
107. “The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake.”
Additional Read: The Four Agreements