BILL WILSON

We are not cured of alcoholism. What we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our daily activities.

Whether the family goes on a spiritual basis or not, the alcoholic member has to if he would recover. The others must be convinced of his new status beyond the shadow of a doubt. Seeing is believing to most families who have lived with a drinker.

We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired.

We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us.

We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it.

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity.

I have become a pupil of the AA movement rather than the teacher.

More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life. He is very much the actor

Each day my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men.

Years ago I used to commiserate with all people who suffered. Now I commiserate only with those who suffer in ignorance, who do not understand the purpose and ultimate utility of pain

Is sobriety all that we are to expect of a spiritual awakening? No, sobriety is only a bare beginning; it is only the first gift of the first awakening. If more gifts are to be received, our awakening has to go on. As it does go on, we find that bit by bit we can discard the old life - the one that did not work - for a new life that can and does work under any conditions whatever.

For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching has become a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.

You are asking yourself, as all of us must: 'Who am I?' . . . 'Where am I?' . . . 'Whence do I go?' The process of enlightenment is usually slow. But, in the end, our seeking always brings a finding. These great mysteries are, after all, enshrined in complete simplicity.

Nothing can be more demoralizing than a clinging and abject dependence upon another human being. This often amounts to the demand for a degree of protection and love that no one could possibly satisfy. So our hoped for protectors finally flee, and once more we are left alone - either to grow up or to disintegrate.

We know that permanent sobriety can be attained only by a most revolutionary change in the life and outlook of the individual.

Because of our kinship in suffering, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart.

True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the profound desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.

I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one's heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion we can ever know.

Almost without exception alcoholics are tortured by loneliness.

The good is the enemy of the best.

How dark it is before the dawn! In reality that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes.

The real question is whether we can learn anything from our experiences upon which we may grow and help others to grow in the likeness and image of God. We know that if we rebel against doing that which is reasonably possible for us, then we will be penalized. And we will be equally penalized if we presume in ourselves a perfection that simply is not there. Apparently, the course of relative humility and progress will have to lie somewhere between these extremes. In our slow progress away from rebellion, true perfection is doubtless several millennia away

AA is no success story in the ordinary sense of the word. It is a story of suffering transmuted, under grace, into spiritual progress.

No personal calamity is so crushing that something true and great can't be made of it

Seeing is believing to most families who have lived with a drinker.