This is really a linear algebra question - you know that the diagonal of a symmetric matrix is positive, and you want to know whether that matrix is positive-definite. The answer is no: consider for example $$ \mathrm{Ric}(e_i,e_j) = \left[\begin{matrix} 1 & -2 \\\ -2 & 1 \end{matrix}\right]_{ij},$$ which has $$\mathrm{Ric}(e_1+e_2, e_1+e_2) = -2 .$$