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“Excessive guilt or rebellion leads to spiritual poverty.”

“There are winners and whiners, and sometimes I seem to embody both. I am, as my friends remind me, a human being.”

“During his first AA years every AA has had plenty of the urge to revolt against authority. I know I did, and can’t claim to be over it yet. I’ve also served my time as a maker of rules, a regulator of other people’s conduct ... I can now look back upon such experiences with much amusement. And gratitude as well.”

“Spiritual growth and experiences are not limited to orthodox believers in a deity, any more than the disease of alcoholism is limited to skid-row bums.”

“I have discovered a new way to learn – by shutting my mouth and listening ... It’s not so much what I’m doing as what I’m not doing. I’m not talking. So I’m open; I’m teachable.”

“Today I have a clearer perspective on what my role as a sponsor is and isn’t. It is to stay sober, be available to listen, share my thoughts, pray for others, and let them live their own lives. It is not to ‘fix’ anyone, get them sober, make them happy, demand they conform, or make their decisions.”

"My stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive."

“Through our failures and trials we get the opportunity to soundly test our merits and virtues.”

“Whereas I used to function at two speeds – fast and stopped – a daily fix of meditation averages those two extremes out to a more gentle and efficient cruise rate.”

“Whether it was pouring coffee in my home group, or going on a Twelfth-Step call, I entered a new pattern of thinking: I thought not only about myself, but about others.”

“I was so busy juggling the regrets of the past with the expectations of tomorrow I had no time for living in the present.”

“Personal glorification, overweening pride, consuming ambition, exhibitionism, intolerant smugness, money or power madness, refusal to admit mistakes and learn from them, self-satisfaction, lazy complacency – these and many more are the garden variety of ills which so often beset movements as well as individuals.”

“It is out of our discussions, our differences of opinion, our daily experiences, and our general consent that the true answers must finally come.”

“Only a gift given in love and gratitude is blessed to the giver and precious to the receiver.”

“In the life of each AA member, there still lurks a tyrant. His name is alcohol.”