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The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

by Miguel Ruiz · 1997

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom is a short self-help and spirituality book by don Miguel Ruiz, written with Janet Mills and published in 1997. Drawing on what Ruiz presents as the ancient wisdom of… more

First published 1997 · 138 pages · English

30 quotes ★ 4.19 (540,631) Philosophy

Quotes from the Book

The Four Agreements 1. Be impeccable with your word. 2. Don’t take anything personally. 3. Don’t make assumptions. 4. Always do your best.
If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn't walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don't need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.
Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally... Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.
If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.
I will no longer allow anyone to manipulate my mind and control my life in the name of love.
God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, "I love you, God," is to live your life doing your best. The best way to say, "Thank you, God," is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now. Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now.
Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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
There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.
Prayer for Love Thank You, Creator of the Universe for the gift of Life you have given me, Thank You for giving me everything that I have ever needed, Thank You for the opportunity to experience this beautiful body and this wonderful mind, Thank You for living inside me with all Your Love and Your pure and boundless Spirit, with Your warm and radiating Light. Thank You for using my words, for using my eyes, for using my heart to share your love wherever I go. I love You just the way you are and because I am your creation, I love myself just the way I am. Help me to keep the Love and the Peace in my Heart and to make that Love a new way of life, that I may live in Love the rest of my life. Amen.
Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself. Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.
Be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best.
It is when we lose control that we repress the emotions, not when we are in control.
Also, go inside and listen to your body, because your body will never lie to you. Your mind will play tricks, but the way you feel in your heart, in your guts, is the truth.
True justice is paying only once for each mistake. True injustice is paying more than once for each mistake.
The big diffrence between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses and the warrior refrains.
What you will see is love coming out of the trees, love coming out of the sky, love coming out of the light. You will perceive love from everything around you. This is the state of bliss.
Whenever we hear an opinion and believe it, we make an agreement, and it becomes part of our belief system.
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.
Humans hardly know what they want, how they want it, or when they want it.
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.
One day, as he slept in a cave, he dreamed that he saw his own body sleeping. He came out of the cave on the night of a new moon. The sky was clear, and he could see millions of stars. Then something happened inside of him that transformed his life forever. He looked at his hands, he felt his body, and he heard his own voice say. "I am made of light, I am made of stars." He looked at the stars again, and he realized that it's not the stars that create the light, but rather the light that creates the stars. "Everything is made of light," he said, "and the space in-between isn't empty." And he knew that everything that exists is one living being, and that light is the messenger of life, because it is alive and contains all information. (xvi)
Maybe we cannot escape from the destiny of the human, but we have a choice: to suffer our destiny or to enjoy our destiny.
You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others.
In any kind of relationship we can make the assumption that others know what we think, and we don’t have to say what we want. They are going to do what we want because they know us so well. If they don’t do what we want, what we assume they should do, we feel hurt and think, “How could you do that? You should know.” Again, we make the assumption that the other person knows what we want. A whole drama is created because we make this assumption and then put more assumptions on top of it.
We judge others according to our image of perfection as well, and naturally they fall short of our expectations.
We are so well trained that we are our own domesticator. We are an autodomesticated animal. We can now domesticate ourselves according to the same belief system we were given, and using the same system of punishment and reward. We punish ourselves when we don't follow the rules according to our belief system; we reward ourselves when we are the "good boy" or "good girl".

Did you know?

  • The book is subtitled 'A Toltec Wisdom Book' and draws on the spiritual beliefs Ruiz attributes to the ancient Toltec people of Mexico.
  • It was co-written with Janet Mills, Ruiz's editor and publisher at Amber-Allen.
  • The book's sales surged after Oprah Winfrey endorsed it on her show, first in 2001 and again in 2013.
  • It has sold approximately 15 million copies in the United States.
  • It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a decade.
  • The title has been translated into dozens of languages worldwide.

About Miguel Ruiz

Don Miguel Ruiz (born August 27, 1952, in rural Mexico) trained and practiced as a surgeon before turning to spiritual teaching rooted in the Toltec tradition. He is the author of a series of Toltec-wisdom books, of which The Four Agreements is the best known, and was named among the Watkins list of the most spiritually influential living people.

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About the book

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom is a short self-help and spirituality book by don Miguel Ruiz, written with Janet Mills and published in 1997. Drawing on what Ruiz presents as the ancient wisdom of the Toltec people of Mexico, the book argues that much of human suffering comes from the beliefs and 'agreements' we unconsciously make with ourselves, with others, and with society, many of which are rooted in fear and self-judgment.

As a corrective, Ruiz proposes four new agreements to live by: be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, and always do your best. He frames these as a practical code of conduct that, if adopted, can break the cycle of limiting beliefs and lead the reader toward greater freedom, happiness, and love. The tone is accessible and instructional rather than academic, aimed at everyday application.

The book became a lasting phenomenon, remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a decade and selling roughly 15 million copies in the United States. Its reach was amplified after endorsements from Oprah Winfrey, and it has been translated into dozens of languages, making it one of the most widely read titles in the modern self-help and New Thought genres.

Book details

First published
1997
Length
138 pages
Reading time
2 hours
Goodreads rating
4.19 (541k ratings)

If you liked this, read…

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    The Power of NowAnother widely read guide to spiritual freedom by releasing fear-based thinking.
  3. 3
    The AlchemistA short, parable-like book about following one's path to personal fulfillment.

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