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“I spent years looking for things to alienate me, make me different, make me special or unique, better or worse ... I was taught through the Steps to start dwelling on the positive – the ‘alikeness’ instead of the differences.”

“Let us continue to take our inventory as a Fellowship, searching out our flaws and confessing them freely. Let us devote ourselves to the repair of all faulty relations that may exist, whether within or without.”

“William Duncan Silkworth ... supplied us with the tools with which to puncture the toughest alcoholic ego, those shattering phrases by which he described our illness: the obsession of the mind that compels us to drink and the allergy of the body that condemns us to go mad or die. Without these indispensable passwords, AA could never have worked.”

“I am glad for everything that has happened to me. I have found a way of life that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.”

“The amount of reality I turn my back on is the amount I lose.”

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”

“Are you finally ready to let go and live your destiny?”

“Nothing is so bad that a drink won’t make worse.”

“As I carried the Fourth Step into the next directional action, the Fifth ... I began to gain by pain, to win by losing, to get control by letting go of control. And good feelings poured in from all sides. I discovered how many words that I had been fond of using were actually traps, setting off negative thinking -- ‘If only...,’ ‘You always...,’ ‘never,’ ‘forever,’ ‘If you would only...,’ and so on. I dug in and tried desperately to change word habits, to share time instead of spending it.”

“God didn’t give me this gift of sobriety to sit in a rocking chair...”

“Love is what the soul thrives on.”

“I feel close to the Great Spirit of my fathers. Words are not necessary. The Great Spirit speaks in all languages.”

“I’m not so quick to judge others. If I’m critical of you, it’s often because I’m trying to ignore that quality in myself.”

“The process of one alcoholic confiding in another has without a doubt saved my life. Nowhere else have I ever found such devotion and understanding as with AA sponsoring.”

“I inevitably find that when I’m able to stay focused on my primary purpose, my ‘secondary purposes’ (school, jobs, relationships) work themselves out quite satisfactorily.”