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“In despair, I had cried out, ‘Now I am willing to do anything. If there is a God, will he show himself?’ And he did. This was my first conscious contact, my first awakening. I asked from the heart, and I received.”

“The Twelve Steps ... are simple in language, plain in meaning. They are also workable by any person having a sincere desire to obtain and keep sobriety. The results are the proof. Their simplicity and workability are such that no special interpretations, and certainly no reservations, have ever been necessary. And it has become increasingly clear that the degree of harmonious living which we achieve is in direct ratio to our earnest attempt to follow them literally under divine guidance to the best of our ability.”

“Our Twelve Traditions ... represent the sum of our experience as individuals, as groups within AA, and similarly with our fellows and other organizations in the great fellowship of humanity under God throughout the world. They are all suggestions, yet the spirit in which they have been conceived merits their serious, prayerful consideration as the guideposts of AA policy for the individual, the group, and our various committees, local and national.”

“One of the truly great gifts in this Fellowship of mutually concerned people is the gift of the art of listening ... But our need to listen goes beyond meetings and talks with friends ... We need Step Eleven and our greater conscious contact with the Divine Listener. Then will our serenity emerge; then will our help to others have quality.”

“I’ve got a brand new feeling, gratitude -- a feeling that has visited me more and more frequently -- sometimes with the rush of cleansing tears -- sometimes with just a serene flow of mental thank-yous for some small, God-given bonus in a routine day.”

“Regardless of what happened before or what may happen tomorrow, what is the very best thing I can possibly do, right now?”

“Spiritual progress isn’t what gets us sober, it’s what keeps us sober.”

“There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.”

“I sometimes forget to feel gratitude for my sobriety ... This is why I must continue to work with others, to go to meetings, to be of some service to the world around me -- not because these are ‘good’ things, but rather so that I can once again be stimulated into feelings of gratitude for this life I have found.”

“I ask at the end of each day: ‘What should I have done better, not to win more money, but to feel more at peace with myself?’ Whatever it was, I can put it on the list as a clue to a defect of character. Despite all my experience, I do not find my list getting very long; what I see is the same faults creeping back in like crabgrass.”

“If each sufferer were to carry the news of the scientific hopelessness of alcoholism to each new prospect, he might be able to lay every newcomer wide open to a transforming spiritual experience.”

“My desire to drink became a desire not to.”

“Few of us will ever be famous, but we can all be great because we serve each other.”

“Times change, alcoholism doesn’t.”

“How wonderful to be sober, to be able to think clearly (at times, at least), and to become aware of some portion of the greater wisdom concealed so deeply within myself.”