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“Because each of us, at any moment, is the sum total of every choice he or she has ever made, it is not sheer fantasy to expect each day to be the very best day we have yet lived.”

“If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand. Let us, with God’s help, continually surrender these hobbling liabilities.”

“Sponsorship is a bridge to trusting the human race, the very race we once resigned from. In learning to trust, we are strengthening our sobriety.”

“My sponsor ... gave me some good advice. ‘Take the words success and failure out of your vocabulary. Replace them with honesty and effort.’”

“I make a conscious effort to keep it simple, because the simpler I make it, the happier I become.”

“As an individual I am so small I’m almost totally meaningless in the universe; it’s almost as if I didn’t exist. But not quite ... As small as I am, I’m not totally meaningless.”

"We found that each of us had to make willing sacrifices ... for the common welfare."

“The spirit of AA has been with me ... for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

“The deception of others is nearly always rooted in the deception of ourselves.”

“Truth is to inner space what sunshine is to a garden.”

“I was relieved to learn that I didn’t have to believe, only be willing to believe. This I could do.”

“Some people think God made life just for happiness, but I find myself unable to share that view. I think he made life for growth and that he permits pain as the touchstone of it all. Happiness -- at the very least, satisfaction -- is a byproduct of really trying to grow. And seasons of real joy are but the occasional byproducts of the process. Which, in eternity, will be the eventual fulfillment. Meantime, we seem to be pilgrims on a road -- one which you and I are completely confident leads into the arms of God.”

“I need to constantly inch forward in AA, closer to the center, to avoid being thrown from the spinning wheel that is my life.”

“I was attracted to AA because it excluded no one, and I am grateful for the lessons I’ve learned over the years: that we stop fighting anyone or anything; that it is the details of what I do that make me who I am; that my perception of life is ever-changing and evolving; that the basic ‘suggestions’ I heard when I entered the Fellowship have been a continuous part of my life; that as long as I stay an active member of AA, more will be revealed.”

"There are always the constructive critics, our friends indeed. We should never fail to give them a careful hearing."