“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”

In God’s economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is.

When brimming with gratitude, one’s heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion we can ever know.

Honesty with ourselves & others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.

We lose the fear of making decisions, great and small; as we realize that should our choice prove wrong we can, if we will, learn from the experience.

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

Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity, or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.

Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and women, of whatever description, is a moving and fascinating adventure.

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

No demands are made on anyone. An experience is offered which members may accept or reject. That is up to them.

Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us.

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.

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.

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.

I am the creator of my own reality. When I [review my day], I know that I must stop judging others.

Indecision with the passing of time becomes decision.

I was born October 5, 1957, on the South Side of Chicago, in the Woodlawn area, a neighborhood that hasn’t changed much in forty-five years. Our house was on 66th and Blackstone, but the city tore it down when the rats took over.

Making people laugh is what I’ve been doing since I was like four or five years old. I still have a lust, I still have a passion. I don’t care about how I look, I’m dedicated to the laughs.

The 16 years have gone so fast. I came to Minnesota as a 19-year-old kid. Marv Grissom was the pitching coach, an old-timer who taught me quite a bit.

I want to be dancing the way I’m dancing now for 30 more years.

I have lived one hundred years; and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.

Medical science in particular will get exponentially better, especially once computers will be powerful enough to digitally simulate entire human brains, meaning medical experiments that would normally take years can be digitally run taking only hours.

Dog movies nowadays are not what dog movies were 50 or even 10 years ago. For one thing, the dogs have become better actors.

I can tell you one thing, Iran is closer to developing nuclear weapons today than it was a week ago, or a month ago or a year ago. It’s just moving on with its efforts.