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“We cannot wholly rely on friends to solve all our difficulties. A good adviser will never do all our thinking for us. He knows that each final choice must be ours.”

“Our spiritual way of life is safe for future generations if, as a Society, we resist the temptation to receive money from the outside world. But this leaves us with a responsibility – one that every member ought to understand. We cannot skimp when the treasurer of our group passes the hat. Our groups, our areas, and AA as a whole will not function unless our services are sufficient and their bills are paid.”

“Do I really want ... to be bitter, hostile, and judgmental? Do I want to live inside that sort of person? Wouldn’t I rather forgive, make allowances, understand? Is self-pity, feeling abused, so precious that I will not trade it for self-liking?”

“Gratitude is just about the finest attribute we can have.”

“Clear vision for tomorrow comes only after a real look at yesterday.”

“I persist in the face of defeat. I can risk being rejected now, because I no longer have to feel resentful and depressed when it happens.”

“The emotions of an alcoholic can fluctuate much in the manner of weather fronts.”

“By working with others I’m allowed to witness the miracle of sobriety and observe the twinkling eyes as others learn to speak the language of the heart.”

“As drinking alcoholics, we all ran from life and toward death. When we join AA, we reverse the process – we give ourselves to life as it is, rather than as we would like it to be.”

“There is one job that we can do superlatively well, and there isn’t anything that can keep us from doing it if we are serious in wanting to. That is the job we do on ourselves, inside ourselves. It means clearing out a whole mess of false values, unrealistic ambitions, and worn-out resentments, and putting in their place the qualities we want to have – kindness, tolerance, friendliness ... We can begin to see what the real values of life are, and they are very different from the hazy, distorted dreams we had.”

“If you want to stop drinking AA doesn’t care whether you are a Christian, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Mohammedan, an atheist, an agnostic, or whatever. The door to AA is wide. Come right in.”

“As long as I am willing to do what I am called to do in any given moment and to abandon the effort to control the results of my actions, then I am following the path that my Higher Power – call it God, Good Orderly Direction, the soul, the life force, or anything else – has set out for me.”

“You don't help anyone by trying to impress them; you impress someone when you try to help them.”

“By applying the principles of the program, I have gained my freedom – freedom to be myself, to like myself as I am, to become whatever it is that my Higher Power has planned for me, one day at a time – freedom to live the type of life I’m most comfortable with, to love, and to laugh.”

“While we need not alter our truths, we can surely improve their application to ourselves, to AA as a whole, and to our relation with the world around us. We can constantly step up ‘the practice of these principles in all our affairs.’”