52 of the Most Inspiring Don Miguel Ruiz Quotes
Ready for some of the best-ever Don Miguel Ruiz Quotes?
A renowned spiritual teacher, Ruiz combines Toltec Wisdom, scientific perspectives, and common sense to guide people to greater personal freedom.
Ruiz’s first book, The Four Agreements, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for almost ten years. He has authored a number of other popular books as well, including The Fifth Agreement and The Mastery of Love. [affiliate links]
I’ve gathered my favorite don Miguel Ruiz Quotes to inspire your inner journey. When you feel alone, confused, or unsure, read them to encourage yourself. When you feel strong and clear, read them to validate your own inner knowing. Let them bring you into the heart of truth.
I’ve organized these quotes by the topics listed below. That way, you can skip ahead to the themes that especially resonate for you.
The Four Agreements
Relationships and Interpersonal Communication
Life Purpose
Advice for Life
Self-Love and Self-Acceptance
Awakening
Take some quiet time for yourself, even just a few minutes, and soak them in.
don Miguel Ruiz Quotes on The Four Agreements
The First Agreement: “Be Impeccable With Your Word”
[1] “Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”
“If you don’t understand something, it is better for you to ask and be clear, instead of making an assumption. The day you stop making assumptions you will communicate cleanly and clearly, free of emotional poison. Without making assumptions your word becomes impeccable.”
The Second Agreement: Don't Take Anything Personally
[3] “Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.”
“There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.”
[5] “Taking things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians. They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up. You eat all their emotional garbage, and now it becomes your garbage. But if you do not take it personally, you are immune in the middle of hell. Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.”
The Third Agreement: “Don't Make Assumptions”
“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. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.”
The Fourth Agreement: “Do Your Best”
[7] “Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.”
“If you do your best always, over and over again, you will become a master of transformation. Practice makes the master. By doing your best you become a master. Everything you have ever learned, you learned through repetition. You learned to write, to drive, and even to walk by repetition. You are a master of speaking your language because you practiced. Action is what makes the difference.”
[9] “Only by making an inventory of our agreements will we uncover all of the conflicts in the mind and eventually make order out of the chaos of the mitote.” [“mitote = “illusion”]
don Miguel Ruiz Quotes on Relationships and Interpersonal Communication
[10] “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.”
“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.”
[12] “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.”
“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.”
[14] “And what is the right woman, the right man? Someone who wants to go in the same direction as you do, someone who is compatible with your views and your values-- emotionally, physically, economically, spiritually.”
“...Nothing that your partner does is personal. Your partner is dealing with her own garbage. If you don't take it personally, it will be so easy for you to have a wonderful relationship with your partner”
[16] “In the track of fear we have so many conditions, expectations, and obligations that we create a lot of rules just to protect ourselves against emotional pain, when the truth is that there shouldn't be any rules. These rules affect the quality of the channels of communication between us, because when we are afraid, we lie. If you have the expectation that I have to be a certain way, then I feel the obligation to be that way.The truth is I am bot what you want me to be. When I am honest and I am what I am, you are already hurt, you are mad. Then I lie to you, because I'm afraid of your judgment. I am afraid you are going to blame me, find me guilty, and punish me.”
“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.”
[18] “In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system. In that denial system we become the perfect liars. We lie so perfectly that we lie to ourselves and we even believe our own lies. We don’t notice we are lying, and sometimes even when we know we are lying, we justify the lie and excuse the lie to protect ourselves from the pain of our wounds. The denial system is like a wall of fog in front of our eyes that blinds us from seeing the truth. We wear a social mask because it’s too painful to see ourselves or to let others see us as we really are. And the denial system lets us pretend that everyone believes what we want them to believe about us. We put up these barriers for protection, to keep other people away,”
“Everyone looks for someone to love them, even when they hate themselves. They wait for lightning to strike, for the phone to ring, for a knight to arrive in shining armor. When people are disappointed in love, they think they’re unlovable. They feel deprived and always hungry. This hunger makes them desperate for any offer of love and attention, and susceptible to all forms of mistreatment.
[20] “A relationship is an event; two individuals meet and catch each other’s attention. Like any event, the length and the quality of it depends on the quality of attention from both sides. A romantic relationship, like any other, can survive indefinitely. Respect is the key. Driven by old habits and emotional dramas, a union will fail, becoming an insatiable monster that eats love and turns it into a thousand investments and fears.”
“The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. Make sure the communication is clear. If you don’t understand, ask. Have the courage to ask questions until you are clear as you can be, and even then do not assume you know all there is to know about a given situation. Once you hear the answer, you will not have to make assumptions because you will know the truth.
[22] “Humans hunt for love. We feel that we need that love because we believe we don’t have love, because we don’t love ourselves. We hunt for love in other humans just like us, expecting to get love from them when these humans are in the same condition as we are. They don’t love themselves either, so how much love can we get from them? We merely create a bigger need that isn’t real; we keep hunting and hunting, but in the wrong place, because other humans don’t have the love we need.”
don Miguel Ruiz Quotes on Life Purpose
[23] “Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.”
“If you can see yourself as an artist, and you can see that your life is your own creation, then why not create the most beautiful story for yourself?”
[25] “We are the same, you and I. We are images of light.”
“The real mission you have in life is to make yourself happy, and in order to be happy, you have to look at what you believe, the way you judge yourself, the way you victimize yourself”
[27] “You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others.”
“Find yourself and express yourself in your own particular way. Express your love openly. Life is nothing but a dream, and if you create your life with love, your dream becomes a masterpiece of art.”
don Miguel Ruiz Quotes on Life
[29] “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.”
“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.”
[31] “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”
“The big diffrence between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses and the warrior refrains.”
[33] “Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”
“Imagine living your life without judging others. You can easily forgive others and let go of any judgments that you have. You don’t have the need to be right, and you don’t need to make anyone else wrong. You respect yourself and everyone else, and they respect you in return.”
[35] “Personal freedom comes from embodying intent, love, and gratitude... this is the mastery of life.”
“Every person is capable of seeing himself, hearing himself, and modifying what he sees—not because he sees imperfection, but because he sees infinite potential.”
[37] “If the mind can hear itself, it can make changes. Self-judgment may be among its favorite foods, but that appetite has to be recognized before it can be modified. The moment the mind identifies itself as a predator, it has committed to becoming an ally. The mind can create chronic problems for the human, but it can offer miraculous solutions as well. It has the ability to imagine. We routinely imagine conversations that haven’t happened. We imagine alternate realities and phenomena yet to be discovered. We reimagine the past and fantasize about the future. We imagine gods and demons. We imagine horrors and wonders.”
“And if you challenge your beliefs just by asking yourself if what you believe is true, you may find out something very interesting: All your life you tried to be good enough for somebody else, and you left yourself last. You sacrificed your personal freedom to live according to somebody else’s point of view.”
[39] “Whatever life takes away from you, let it go.”
don Miguel Ruiz Quotes on Self-Love and Self-Acceptance
[40] “I no longer agree to treat myself with disrespect. Every time a self-critical thought comes to mind, I will forgive the Judge and follow this comment with words of praise, self-acceptance, and love.”
“Humans punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believethey should be. They become very self-abusive, and they use other people to abuse themselves as well.”
[42] “People are starving for love, not knowing their heart is a magical kitchen. Open your heart. Open your magical kitchen and refuse to walk around the world begging for love. In your heart is all the love you need. Your heart can create any amount of love, not just for yourself, but for the whole world.
“You don't have to try to be good; you just need to stop pretending to be what you are not.”
[44] “You are alive, and you don’t need to justify your existence. You can be the biggest mystery in your own story.”
“You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.”
[46] “Imagine living your life without the fear of being judged by others. You no longer rule your behavior according to what others may think about you. You are no longer responsible for anyone’s opinion. You have no need to control anyone, and no one controls you, either.”
don Miguel Ruiz Quotes on Awakening
[47] “The first step toward personal freedom is awareness. We need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free. We need to be aware of what the problem is in order to solve the problem.”
“Awakenings happen to the living. A man can wake up, see the prison he has made, and decide to choose freedom. He can end his appetite for lies and discover the sweet taste of truth. He can persevere, changing his point of view from mind to matter to the dream of light, and then to the exquisite realization of himself as life. The reflection can be redeemed; the mirror image can come within a heartbeat of its maker, see itself, and then shatter into total awareness. It can happen in one man’s lifetime.”
[49] “The warrior has awareness...we are aware that we are at war , and the war in our minds requires discipline. Not the discipline of a soldier but the discipline of a warrior. Not the discipline from the outside to tell us what to do and not to do, but the discipline to be ourselves, no matter what.”
“Your nature is to love; remember your nature. If you are acting against your nature, you’re pretending to be another species. You’ve pretended so long that you actually are another species. Awareness means seeing, and remembering, the truth—it never went away. It never was gone, but your attention has been on the lies.”
[51] “Humans are born with awareness; we are born to perceive the truth, but we accumulate knowledge, and we learn to deny what we perceive. We practice not being aware, and we master not being aware.”
“You are the unknowable. You are here just to be in this moment, in this dream. Being has nothing to do with knowledge. It’s not about understanding. You don’t need to understand. It’s not about learning. You are here to unlearn, and that’s it, until one day you realize you know nothing.”
I use quotes like these from don Miguel Ruiz to provide the daily inspiration I need to keep a bigger, more spacious, and more compassionate perspective on life. Otherwise, it’s so easy to get distracted by the mundane, the miscellaneous, and the unnecessary, and completely forget the true purpose of life.
Make these deep quotes a part of your daily life. Write them in your planner or tape them onto a mirror or cabinet. Contemplate them. What does each one really mean to you? How does it apply in your life? Journal about it.
I hope you enjoy these don Miguel Ruiz quotes, and that as you read them you feel more in tune with the beauty and mystery of this existence.
Your Turn!
Do you have a favorite don Miguel Ruiz Quote? Share it in the comment and tell us what it means to you or how it helps you. I would love to hear.
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