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“My belief in a Higher Power is as strong as it was when I went to my first AA meeting and accepted the first and second Steps as simply and as trustfully as a child accepts its mother’s milk ... So what on earth was I looking for? I just don’t know. I guess I wanted a little Tinker Bell all my own to show me the right and only way out of every situation.”

“When it seems like love just isn’t enough, I remind myself that it is all I have to give beyond my experience, strength and hope.”

“Success and failure share a common denominator ... Both are temporary.”

“Faith is more than our greatest gift; its sharing with others is our greatest responsibility.”

“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.”

“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.”

"What I've had to figure out is that I can't figure anything out."