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“It should be the privilege, even the right, of each individual or group to handle anonymity as they wish ... Each individual will have to decide where he ought to draw the line -- how far he ought to carry the principle in his own affairs, how far he may go in dropping his own anonymity without injury to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole.”

“It seems to me that one of the major purposes of the last three Steps is to keep us from complacency, to keep us growing so that we don’t fall back into our old, sick ways and perhaps even into active alcoholism.”

“Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity, or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.”

“By our Twelve Steps we have recovered, by our Twelve Traditions we have unified, and through our Third Legacy -- Service -- we shall carry the AA message down through the corridors of time to come.”

“We cannot grow very much unless we constantly try to envision what the eternal spiritual values are.”

“Mere change is not necessarily progress.”

“Self-centeredness is a poison to my emotional system. It frustrates my every effort toward a comfortable and happy existence. A terrible chain reaction begins. Fear sets in. Anger, resentment, and self-pity become my guiding forces. My only escape is to put this awful selfishness aside and become involved with the world around me.”

“Isn’t a donation of my time and services just as important as my donation of cash? What if my home group had money for coffee, rent, and literature, but no one to open the meeting room and make the coffee?”

“The part of my job that always catches me off-guard is the palpable jolt of pleasure I get from the little ways to be helpful -- to be of service -- to others, for which they are so genuinely grateful.”

“Life is lived moment to moment ... and every moment provides me with an opportunity for growth.”

“By the fall of 1937 we could count what looked like forty recovered members. One of us had been sober three years, another two and a half, and a fair number had a year or more behind them. As all of us had been hopeless cases, this amount of time elapsed began to be significant. The realization that we ‘had found something’ began to take hold of us. No longer were we a dubious experiment. Alcoholics could stay sober.”

“I still don’t know much about heaven, but I’ve learned some valuable lessons about life on earth.”

“A large part of my recovery has been in learning how not to listen to myself.”

“Sobriety is a constant process of uncovering, discovering, and discarding.”

“I did not know what real happiness was when I came through the doors of AA. I needed someone to teach me.”