The Fifth Agreement Quotes

I respect you when I don’t try to tell you how to live your life, how to dress, how to walk, how to talk, how to do whatever you do in your kingdom.

You are here just to be, for no reason. You have no mission except to enjoy life, to be happy. The only thing you need is just to be the real you. Be authentic. Be the presence. Be happiness. Be love. Be joy. Be yourself; that’s the main point. That’s wisdom.

Perhaps you're not finished with your story, and who knows if you'll ever finish it or not. Honestly, it's not that important.

We speak the truth because we live in truth.

Whatever people think of you is really about the image they have of you, and that image isn’t you.

The result of practicing the fifth agreement is the complete acceptance of yourself just the way you are, and the complete acceptance of everybody else just the way they are. The reward is your eternal happiness.

Even the worst thing that can happen to you is meant to happen because it’s going to push you to grow.

Our attention is in the moment; we are not afraid of the future or ashamed of the past.

Humans have invented all kinds of symbols to communicate not only with other humans but more importantly with ourselves.

Once you are aware that you’re dreaming, you recover your power to change the dream whenever you choose.

We want our freedom; we want to be ourselves, but we are also afraid to be by ourselves.

Be responsible for every choice you make in your life. This is your life; it’s nobody else’s life, and you will find that it’s nobody else’s business what you do with your life.

Humans have a need to explain and justify everything; we have a need for knowledge, and we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know.

After domestication, we try to be good enough for everybody else, but we are no longer good enough for ourselves, because we can never live up to our image of perfection.

You have the right to live your own life, in your own way, and there is no wrong way.

Making assumptions and then taking them personally is the beginning of hell in this world. Almost all of our conflicts are based on this, and it’s easy to understand why. Assumptions are nothing more than lies that we are telling ourselves. This creates a big drama for nothing, because we don’t really know if something is true or not. Making assumptions is just looking for drama when there’s no drama happening. And if drama is happening in someone else’s story, so what? It’s not your story; it’s someone else’s story.

What is real we cannot change, and it doesn’t matter what we believe.

We can only think in a language that we master.

Making assumptions and then taking them personally is the beginning of hell in this world.

Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, took his whole life to get to the point where he said, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

Words are your paintbrush, and your life is the canvas. You can paint whatever you want to paint; you can even copy another artist’s work — but what you express with your paintbrush is the way you see yourself, the way you see the entire reality.

The only person who needs to be concerned about the story of you is you.

Fictions are useful so long as they are taken as fictions. They are then simply ways of "figuring" the world which we agree to follow so that we can act in cooperation, as we agree about inches and hours, numbers and words, mathematical systems and languages. If we have no agreement about measures of time and space, I would have no way of making a date with you at the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue at 3 P.M. on Sunday, April 4.

During your whole life you practiced every moment to become what you believe you are right now. You practiced until it became automatic. And when you start practicing something new, when you change what you believe you are, your whole life is going to change. If you practice being impeccable with your word, if you don’t take anything personally, if you don’t make assumptions, you are going to break thousands of agreements that keep you trapped in the dream of hell. Very soon, what you agree to believe will become the choice of your authentic self, not the choice of the image of yourself that you thought you were.

Awareness makes all the difference.

Is it really true that you’re not perfect just the way you are? Can you see all the judgments that you have about yourself? Every judgment is just an opinion — it’s just a point of view — and that point of view wasn’t there when you were born. Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it. You learned the opinions from Mom, Dad, siblings, and society. They sent all those images of how a body should look; they expressed all those opinions about the way you are, the way you are not, the way you should be. They delivered a message, and you agreed with that message. And now you think so many things about what you are, but are they the truth? You see, the problem is not really knowledge; the problem is believing in a distortion of knowledge — and that is what we call a lie. What is the truth, and what is the lie? What is real, and what is virtual? Can you see the difference, or do you believe that voice in your head every time it speaks and distorts the truth while assuring you that what you believe is the way things really are? Is it really true that you’re not a good human, and that you’ll never be good enough? Is it really true that you don’t deserve to be happy? Is it really true that you’re not worthy of love?

Words are your paintbrush, and your life is the canvas.

By the time we grow up, our faith is already invested in so many lies that we hardly have any power left to create the dream that we want to create.

the mastery of transformation is the process of unlearning what you have already learned. You learn by making agreements, and you unlearn by breaking agreements.

Truth or fiction, you don’t have to believe anyone’s story. You don’t have to form an opinion about what someone says. You don’t have to express your own opinion. You don’t have to agree

There’s the object of perception, which is the truth, and there’s our interpretation of the truth, which is just a point of view. The truth is objective, and we call it science. Our interpretation

When religions describe the dream of hell, they say it’s a place where we burn, a place where we are judged, a place of eternal punishment. Well, that description of hell is the ordinary dream of the humans. That very same thing is happening in the human mind — the judgment, the guilt, the punishment, and the emotions generated by fear that feel like a fire burning inside us. Fear is king of the underworld, and it rules our world by creating the distortions in our knowledge. Fear creates the whole world of injustice and emotional drama, the whole nightmare that billions of people are living in.

Every human is a magician, and in the interaction between the magicians, there are spells being cast everywhere. How? By misusing the word, by taking everything personally, by distorting everything we perceive with assumptions, by gossiping and spreading emotional poison with the word. Humans cast spells mainly upon the people we love the most, and the more authority we have, the more powerful the spells.

When we find out that Santa Claus isn’t the truth, we no longer believe in Santa Claus, and the power we invested in that symbol returns to us. This is when we become aware that we are the one who agreed to believe in Santa Claus.

As artists, we distort the truth and create the most amazing theories; we create entire philosophies and the most amazing religions; we create stories and superstitions about everything, including ourselves. And this is exactly the main point: We create them.

Now you know that all the acting you did your whole life was really for nothing because nobody perceives you the way you want to be perceived. You can see that all the drama that happens in your movie isn’t really noticed by anybody around you. It’s obvious that everybody’s attention is focused on their own movie. They don’t even notice when you’re sitting right beside them in their theater! The actors have all their attention on their story, and that is the only reality they live in. Their attention is so hooked by their own creation that they don’t even notice their own presence—the one who is observing their movie.

The first dysfunction is an absence of trust among team members. Essentially, this stems from their unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust. This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments. A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings. Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team. Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.

The National Socialist Movement has, besides its delivery from the Jewishcapitalist shackles imposed by a plutocratic-democratic, dwindling class of exploiters at home, pronounced its resolve to free the Reich from the shackles of the Diktat of Versailles abroad. The German demands for a revision were an absolute necessity, a matter of course for the existence and the honor of any great people. Posterity will some day come to regard them as exceedingly modest. All these demands had to be carried through, in practice against the will of the British French potentates. Now more than ever we all see it as a success of the leadership of the Third Reich that the realization of these revisions was possible for years without resort to war. This was not the case-as the British and French demagogues would have it-because we were not then in a position to wage war. When it finally appeared as though, thanks to a gradually awakening common sense, a peaceful resolution of the remaining problems could be reached through international cooperation, the agreement concluded in this spirit on September 29, 1938, at Munich by the four great states predominantly involved, was not welcomed by public opinion in London and Paris, but was condemned as a despicable sign of weakness. The Jewish capitalist warmongers, their hands covered with blood, saw in the possible success of such a peaceful revision the vanishing of plausible grounds for the realization of their insane plans. Once again that conspiracy of pitiful, corrupt political creatures and greedy financial magnates made its appearance, for whom war is a welcome means to bolster business. The international Jewish poison of the peoples began to agitate against and to coroode healthy minds. Men of letters set out to portray decent men who desired peace as weaklings and traitors, to denounce opposition parties as a “fifth column,” in order to eliminate internal resistance to their criminal policy of war. Jews and Freemasons, armament industrialists and war profiteers, international traders and stockjobbers, found political blackguards: desperados and glory seekers who represented war as something to be yearned for and hence wished for. Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag Berlin, July 19, 1940

It is still evident that the problem of finances is an enormously important one. The lack of money to do the job and to compete successfully for audiences with elaborate and attractive commercial programs seems almost hopeless. As far back as 1936, Doctor [Levering] Tyson . . . stated at the joint meeting of the Council and the Institute for Education by Radio at Columbus: Unfortunately, there is not much chance to get money until there is some general understanding of, and agreement in, country-wide objectives to which local and regional objectives can be fitted, and until controversy over these objectives is eliminated so that a unified plan of procedure can be followed

What kind of messenger are you?

What you pretend to be is so complicated that I don’t even bother to try to understand it.

Just thinking “What if?” can create a huge drama in our lives.

But now you are aware that our opinions are not the truth; they’re just a point of view.

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.

The world of the warriors is the world of trying. We try to change the world that we don’t like, and we keep trying, and trying, and trying, and the war looks endless.

We tell them about a Santa Claus who rewards little children who are “good,” or more like “God.” These messages are distorted. The kind of god who plays with justice doesn’t exist. Santa Claus doesn’t exist. All that knowledge in our head isn’t real.

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.

Alfred P. Sloan, the former CEO of General Motors, presents a nice contrast. He was leading a group of high-level policy makers who seemed to have reached a consensus. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here….Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.” Herodotus, writing in the fifth century B.C., reported that the ancient Persians used a version of Sloan’s techniques to prevent groupthink. Whenever a group reached a decision while sober, they later reconsidered it while intoxicated.

If the ‘heathen’ — that is, the German and the French teachers — were regarded with little respect, the teacher of writing, Ebert, who was a German Jew, was a real martyr. To be insolent with him was a sort of chic amongst the pages. His poverty alone must have been the reason why he kept to his lesson in our corps. The old hands, who had stayed for two or three years in the fifth form without moving higher up, treated him very badly; but by some means or other he had made an agreement with them: ‘One frolic during each lesson, but no more’ — an agreement which, I am afraid, was not always honestly kept on our side. One day, one of the residents of the remote peninsula soaked the blackboard sponge with ink and chalk and flung it at the calligraphy martyr. ‘Get it, Ebert!’ he shouted, with a stupid smile. The sponge touched Ebert’s shoulder, the grimy ink spirted into his face and down on to his white shirt. We were sure that this time Ebert would leave the room and report the fact to the inspector. But he only exclaimed, as he took out his cotton handkerchief and wiped his face, ‘Gentlemen, one frolic — no more to-day! The shirt is spoiled,’ he added in a subdued voice, and continued to correct someone’s book. We looked stupefied and ashamed. Why, instead of reporting, he had thought at once of the agreement! The feelings of the whole class turned in his favour. ‘What you have done is stupid,’ we reproached our comrade. ‘He is a poor man, and you have spoiled his shirt! Shame!’ somebody cried. The culprit went at once to make excuses. ‘One must learn, sir,’ was all that Ebert said in reply, with sadness in his voice. All became silent after that, and at the next lesson, as if we had settled it beforehand, most of us wrote in our best possible handwriting, and took our books to Ebert, asking him to correct them. He was radiant, he felt happy that day. This fact deeply impressed me, and was never wiped out from my memory. To this day I feel grateful to that remarkable man for his lesson.

COVENANT The basic structure of the relationship God has established with His people is the covenant. A covenant is usually thought of as a contract. While there surely are some similarities between covenants and contracts, there are also important differences. Both are binding agreements. Contracts are made from somewhat equal bargaining positions, and both parties are free not to sign the contract. A covenant is likewise an agreement. However, covenants in the Bible are not usually between equals. Rather, they follow a pattern common to the ancient Near East suzerain-vassal treaties. Suzerain-vassal treaties (as seen among the Hittite kings) were made between a conquering king and the conquered. There was no negotiation between the parties. The first element of these covenants is the preamble, which lists the respective parties. Exodus 20:2 begins with “I am the LORD your God.” God is the suzerain; the people of Israel are the vassals. The second element is the historical prologue. This section lists what the suzerain (or Lord) has done to deserve loyalty, such as bringing the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. In theological terms, this is the section of grace. In the next section, the Lord lists what He will require of those He rules. In Exodus 20, these are the Ten Commandments. Each of the commandments were considered morally binding on the entire covenant community. The final part of this type of covenant lists blessings and cursings. The Lord lists the benefits that He will bestow upon His vasssals if they follow the stipulations of the covenant. An example of this is found in the fifth commandment. God promises the Israelites that their days will be long in the Promised Land if they honor their parents. The covenant also presents curses should the people fail in their responsibilities. God warns Israel that He will not hold them guiltless if they fail to honor His name. This basic pattern is evident in God’s covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the covenant between Jesus and His church. In biblical times, covenants were ratified in blood. It was customary for both parties to the covenant to pass between dismembered animals, signifying their agreement to the terms of the covenant (see Jeremiah 34:18). We have an example of this kind of covenant in Genesis 15:7-21. Here, God made certain promises to Abraham, which were ratified by the sacrificing of animals. However in this case, God alone passes through the animals, indicating that He is binding Himself by a solemn oath to fulfill the covenant. The new covenant, the covenant of grace, was ratified by the shed blood of Christ upon the cross. At the heart of this covenant is God’s promise of redemption. God has not only promised to redeem all who put their trust in Christ, but has sealed and confirmed that promise with a most holy vow. We serve and worship a God who has pledged Himself to our full redemption.

You’re alive; you do exist, that’s true, but what are you? The truth is you don’t know. You only know what you believe you are, you know what you learned that you are, you know what you were told that you are, you know what you pretend to be, you know the way you wish to be seen by other people, and for you it may be true. But is it really true that you are what you say you are? I don’t think so. Whatever you say about yourself is just symbology, and it is completely distorted by your beliefs.

Some people can lead the whole world into a great war where millions of people die. There are tyrants all around the world who invade other countries and destroy their people because the tyrants believe in lies.

Belki gerçekten istediğiniz şeyi bilmek için kendinize yalan söylemekten vazgeçmeniz gerekebilir.

The mastery of the human mind requires complete control of the attention — the way we interpret and react to information we perceive from inside of us and outside of us.

would be to rejoin the Paris Agreement and recommit to building a healthier economy and planet. Sixty-one percent of Americans age eighteen to twenty-nine—who made up almost one-fifth of the electorate—would vote for Biden.

the result is: I am. I am what I am; you are what you are, and the complete acceptance of whatever you are is what makes the difference.

When you finally see yourself without all the knowledge that you’ve accumulated, the result is: I am. I am what I am; you are what you are, and the complete acceptance of whatever you are is what makes the difference.

All humans are artists, all of us. Every symbol, every word, is a little piece of art. From my point of view, and thanks to our programming, our greatest masterpiece of art is the use of a language to create an entire virtual reality within our mind.

If you can believe in your limitations, then why not believe in the beauty and power of life that’s flowing through you?

If you’re always transforming — if your dream is always changing even if you don’t want it to change — why not master the transformation and create your personal heaven?

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. You tried to be good enough for your mother, your father, your teachers, your beloved, your children, your religion, and society. After trying for so many years, you try to be good enough for yourself, and you find out that you’re not good enough for yourself.

The adults can only teach us what they know; they cannot teach us what they don’t know. What they know is what they learned in their whole lives; it’s what they believed in their whole lives. You can be sure that your parents did the best they could for you at the time. If they didn’t do better, it’s because they didn’t know any better.

Before domestication, we don’t care what we are or what we look like. Our tendency is to explore, to express our creativity, to seek pleasure and avoid pain. As little children, we are wild and free; we run around naked without self-consciousness or self-judgment. We speak the truth because we live in truth. Our attention is in the moment; we are not afraid of the future or ashamed of the past. After domestication, we try to be good enough for everybody else, but we are no longer good enough for ourselves, because we can never live up to our image of perfection. All of our normal human tendencies are lost in the process of domestication, and we begin to search for what we have lost. We start searching for freedom because we are no longer free to be what we really are; we start searching for happiness because we are no longer happy; we start searching for beauty because we no longer believe that we are beautiful.

I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand.

Humans carry our past, our history, around with us, and it’s just like we’re carrying a heavy corpse.

instead of doubting yourself, have faith in yourself. Instead of doubting the truth, doubt the lies. Be skeptical, but learn to listen.

Everything that exists is true: the earth is true, the stars are true, the entire universe has always been true. But the symbols that we use to construct what we know are only true because we say so.

Humans are born with the power of creation, and we are constantly creating stories with the words that we learned.

You were programmed to deliver a message, and the creation of that message is your greatest art. What is the message? Your life. With that message, you create mainly the story of you, and then a story about everything you perceive. You create an entire virtual reality in your mind, and you live in that reality. When you think, you’re thinking in your language; you’re repeating in your mind all those symbols that mean something to you. You’re giving yourself a message, and that message is the truth for you because you believe that it’s the truth.

The world is populated by billions of dreamers who aren’t aware that people are living in their own world, dreaming their own dream.

I was using symbols to try to understand the truth, when the real truth is that the symbols have nothing to say about the truth. The truth existed long before humans created symbols.

The truth leads us to our authenticity, to happiness. Lies lead us to limitations in our lives, to suffering and drama. Whoever believes in truth, lives in heaven. Whoever believes in lies, sooner or later lives in hell.

Our body is completely loyal to us, but we judge our body and abuse our body; we treat it as if it’s the enemy when it’s our ally.

In the process of domestication, the belief system becomes the book of law that rules our lives. When we follow the rules according to our book of law, we reward ourselves; when we don’t follow the rules, we punish ourselves. The belief system becomes the big judge in our mind, and also the greatest victim because first it judges us, then it punishes us. The big judge is made by symbols, and it works with symbols to judge everything we perceive, including the symbols! The victim is the part of us that receives the judgment and suffers the punishment. And when we interact with the outside dream, we judge and punish everyone and everything else according to our personal book of law.

Right now, you’re delivering a message to yourself and to everyone else around you. You’re always delivering a message, and you’re always receiving a message from one mind to another mind. What is the message that you are delivering in this world? Is the message impeccable? Do you even notice that you are always using symbols?

The belief system rules the human life like a tyrant. It takes our freedom away from us and makes us its slave.

Every one of our beliefs, from a minimal one like the sound of a letter to a whole philosophy, is using our life force to survive.

During your whole life you practiced every moment to become what you believe you are right now.

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.

Be skeptical because most of what you hear isn’t true. You know that humans speak with symbols, and that symbols aren’t the truth. Symbols are only the truth because we agree, not because they are really the truth.

The truth doesn’t need you to believe it; the truth simply is, and it survives whether you believe it or not. Lies need you to believe them. If you don’t believe lies, they don’t survive your skepticism, and they simply disappear.

The only truth for you is what you perceive in your world. With this awareness, there’s nothing to prove to anyone. It’s not about being right or wrong. You respect whatever somebody says because it’s another artist speaking. Respect is so important. When you learn to listen, you show respect for the other artists—you show respect for their art, for their creation.

Right now, you are interpreting what I’m saying according to your personal knowledge. You are rearranging the symbols and transforming them in a way that maintains an equilibrium with everything in your belief system.

Don’t believe everything you learned! Not believing yourself is a huge advantage, because most of what you learned is not the truth. Everything you know, your whole reality, is nothing but symbols. But you are not that bunch of symbols that talk in your head. You know that, and that’s why you are skeptical and you don’t believe yourself.

Can you see the consequences of believing yourself? Believing yourself is one of the worst things you can do because you’ve been telling yourself lies your whole life, and if you believe all those lies, that’s why your dream isn’t a pleasant dream.

I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand. You are responsible for what you understand; you are responsible for whatever you do with what you hear in your head, because you are the one who gives the meaning to every word that you hear.

Always be aware of how you are using the word, and be impeccable with your word.

Every judgment is just an opinion — it’s just a point of view — and that point of view wasn’t there when you were born.

Be impeccable with your word really means never use the power of the word against yourself.

The first and most important tool for you to become a master artist is be impeccable with your word. It’s something so simple. You write your own story, and you don’t want to write the story against yourself. Second, don’t take anything personally. That will help you a lot; most of the drama goes away if you just agree with that. Third, don’t make assumptions. Don’t create your own hell; stop believing in superstitions and lies. And fourth, always do your best. Take action. Practice makes the master. Very simple.

That’s the fifth agreement. Come back to common sense, to the truth, to the real you. Be skeptical, but learn to listen.

which means the Toltec, these three worlds are known as the dream of the first attention, the dream of the second attention, and the dream of the third attention.

When you recover your presence, you are just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun, just like the light. You are just like you. There is nothing to justify; there is nothing to believe. You are here just to be, for no reason. You have no mission except to enjoy life, to be happy. The only thing you need is just to be the real you. Be authentic. Be the presence. Be happiness. Be love. Be joy. Be yourself; that’s the main point. That’s wisdom.

Everything is within you. You don’t have to search for heaven; you are heaven right now. You don’t have to search for happiness; you are happiness wherever you are. You don’t have to search for the truth; you are the truth. You don’t have to search for perfection. That’s an illusion. You don’t have to search for yourself; you never left yourself. You don’t have to search for God; God never left you. God is always with you; you are always with yourself. If you don’t see God everywhere, it’s because your attention is focused on all those gods you really believe in.