William Griffith Wilson (Bill Wilson) Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life. He is very much the actor
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We know that permanent sobriety can be attained only by a most revolutionary change in the life and outlook of the individual.
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Indecision with the passing of time becomes decision.
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The temporary good is enemy to the permanent best.
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The good is the enemy of the best.
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Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us.
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Only the self-deceived will claim perfect freedom from fear.
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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.
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In God's economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is.
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In the wake of my spiritual experience there came a vision of a society of alcoholics.
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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.
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AA is no success story in the ordinary sense of the word. It is a story of suffering transmuted, under grace, into spiritual progress.
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Because of our kinship in suffering, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart.
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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.
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Pain is the touchstone of all growth
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Almost without exception alcoholics are tortured by loneliness.
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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.
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Seeing is believing to most families who have lived with a drinker.
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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.
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No personal calamity is so crushing that something true and great can't be made of it
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Nothing matters more to AA's future welfare than the manner in which we use the colossus of modern communication. Used unselfishly and well, it can produce results surpassing our present imagination.
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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.
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God is either everything, or He is nothing.
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I have become a pupil of the AA movement rather than the teacher.