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“What I’ve had to figure out is that I can’t figure anything out.”

“My life and the lives of those around me do, in fact, form their own parts in a symphony of interaction.”

“The phrase ‘God as we understand him’ is perhaps the most important expression to be found in our whole AA vocabulary. Within the compass of these five significant words there can be included every kind and degree of faith, together with the positive assurance that each of us may choose his own.”

“I’ve likened that transforming instant, when despair gave way to a glimmer of hope, to a tiny flower sprung into bloom amid the bombed-out wreckage of my life. Thanks to AA, that tiny bloom was to become a garden.”

“Sobriety does interesting things to the mind – clears it up some, lets a bit of honesty and truth filter in, and begins to demand reality.”

“Sometimes taking somebody else’s inventory can be most beneficial. When I was doing my Fourth Step, an old-timer suggested I list the names of those against whom I held resentments, followed by two or three sentences describing what they had done to earn my displeasure. Then, after putting the list aside for a day, I was to cross off each person’s name and replace it with my own.”

“So long as there is the slightest interest in sobriety, the most unmoral, the most antisocial, the most critical alcoholic may gather about him a few kindred spirits and announce to us that a new Alcoholics Anonymous group has been formed. Anti-God, anti-medicine, anti-our recovery program, even anti-each other – these rampant individuals are still an AA group if they think so!”

“When I go to a meeting today, I no longer have the delusion that I am supporting a good cause. I need AA; AA did quite well without me during my ten years of self-exile. I go to AA meetings today to hear and see how God is working. When I share at a meeting, it is not to try and ‘help’ those poor wretches, it is because I need their help and guidance.”

“AA is a caring community ... of people who understand how others can be trapped in deep loneliness and despair.”

“Those who slip, those who panhandle, those who scandalize, those with mental twists, those who rebel at the program, those who trade on the AA reputation – all such persons seldom harm an AA group for long ... They oblige us to cultivate patience, tolerance, and humility.”

“We have grown from two people to two million ... We must be doing something right.”

“I remember asking my sponsor, ‘When do I start the Steps?’ He replied, ‘When do you want to get well?’”

“Few victims of this illness can expect sobriety without a major change in most aspects of living.”

“The more I learn the more there is to learn.”

“All of us in AA have a right to our own opinion, even if that opinion is that somebody else’s opinion is not as good as ours ... The whole structure of AA is based on a democratic spirit. There are no bosses or gurus.”