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“We shall never be at our best except when we hew only to the primary spiritual aim of AA. That of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers alcoholism.”

“Good things increase in direct proportion to my willingness to become teachable.”

“All AA progress can be reckoned in terms of just two words: humility and responsibility.”

“It is our experience as alcoholics that makes us of unique value ... We can approach sufferers as no one else can.”

"Only mutual trust can be the foundation for great love -- each of us for the other, and all of us for God.”

“It’s not the wonderful people I’ve met from throughout these great lands who have helped keep me sober most of the time, but those wonderful people sitting around the table in my hometown who loved me when I could not love, who waited for me to quit lying, who tolerated me when I would be part of nothing, and who never asked me to leave when I was obnoxious. Because of their love and patience, I was able to get outside of myself and make some sort of commitment to the group.”

“Tomorrow – and all the tomorrows to come – are but extensions of right here, right now.”

“We need to constantly scrutinize ourselves carefully, in order to make everlastingly certain that we shall always be strong enough and single-purposed enough from within, to relate ourselves rightly to the world without.”

“We reject fantasizing and accept reality. And we find it beautiful. For, at last, we are at peace with ourselves. And with others. And with God.”

“When I can identify my own shortcomings in another, the battleground between us is removed.”

“Why dwell on what you can’t do? ... Why not concentrate on what you can do and do it?”

“A religious, or spiritual experience, is the act of giving up reliance on one’s own omnipotence.”

“I was told when I got sober that I could act my way into right thinking, but I could never think my way into right action.”

“I need to remember how humiliated, confused, insecure and frightened I felt at my first meeting, and compare that to how I feel today.”

“Ever so slowly, I could feel myself changing. Things that had seemed important were no longer important. There was inside me a warming, a softening, a stirring, as the petals of a rosebud stir almost imperceptibly into a blossom.”