Since The Upper Room was so widely read by program pioneers, have searched high and low for period issues without success.? Anyone have a link or idea for how to access? #TheUpperRoom

The following files and folders have been uploaded to the Files area of the [email protected] group.

• /White and Research Papers, News and Magazine Articles and Timelines/The Survival of a Fitting Quotation AAHL.pdf

By: Thom R. <thomr021092@...>

Description:
This is the story of a famous quotation and the environments in which it has adapted and survived. To the 20th and 21st centuries, the story would seem to begin in the year 1939 when the book Alcoholics Anonymous was published. A contributing author of that text used a quotation to head his chapter. He attributed the quotation to a man named Herbert Spencer, presumably the 19th century British philosopher, evolutionist, and sociologist: “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." In this context, the author was trying to challenge “the mental attitudes of many alcoholics when the subject of religion, as a cure, is first brought to their attention.”2 In later editions of Alcoholics Anonymous (1955,1976, 2002(sic)), this author’s chapter was replaced, but the Spencer quotation is preserved in an appendix to encourage people to keep an open mind about the religious or spiritual remedy that Alcoholics Anonymous prescribes for its members. Since 1939, over twenty million copies of Alcoholics Anonymous have been printed, and with each copy, another copy of this quotation attributed to Herbert Spencer. The quotation has since been used by a variety of authors. A variation has even appeared in one dictionary of quotations. On the Internet, new variations multiply and mutate. By now, the quotation is famous, and has made the nearly forgotten Herbert Spencer famous in the 21st century for saying it. But Herbert Spencer never wrote or said anything resembling this quotation. ---- (This white paper is ?2005 Michael St. George (author is not an alcoholic so last name is okay) - Edition 1.0 - 12 March 2005 - ORIGINAL URL (no longer works): http://www.geocities.com/fitquotation/ - ARCHIVE URL (works as of February 2024): https://web.archive.org/web/20090125131318/http://www.geocities.com/fitquotation/ - ORIGINAL DOCUMENT EMAIL: fitquotation@... (We are not sure if the e-mail works anymore) -Thom R. AAHL Moderator

开云体育

开云体育

What are you referring to?

Greetings, would anyone have the history of the conferences?
Thanks in advance.

Luis

Please, does anyone have information and the name of the person who tore up the checks at the Alcoholic Foundation?

开云体育

开云体育

“a design for living” is in quotation marks on page 28 of chapter 2 of the big book, I’m wondering why? Is it in reference to another text or quote from the author (Bill W.)??

Looking for facts over opinions, but open to hearing what others have to share.

Thanks,?
Jimi C Chicagoland?

Somewhere, some time in the old yahoo group, I read a post that related Bill W said the best way for a newcomer to read the "Big Book" was to start with the personal stories. At the point the reader encountered a story they related to, then the should read the first 164 pages. The idea was it was important to be able to "identify in." For the life of me, I cannot retrieve this post, nor find any references to it. Does anyone have any information on this? Happy to know whether it was true or just another bit of lore that doesn't have supporting evidence. Thanks in advance!?

开云体育

"Writing the Big Book" addresses this at the bottom on page 336 in a footnote:

"It would be wonderful to support AA's belief that the best way to stay sober is to carry the message of recovery to another alcoholic, but without a single shred of evidence in its favor (other than the fact that it sounds like something that certainly?ought?to be true) its appearance here must be limited to a footnote. The anecdote is, quite frankly, such a great story that if it were true, surely Bill or Lois would have recounted it at some time, most likely with considerable relish (just as they both candidly told the shoe throwing incident. But there is absolutely no evidence that either of them over told this story in a recoded talk or in any of their writings. Instead, they both ascribed Wilson's first realization of this fact to the day he was in such distress in Akon in May 1935 (at the Mayflower Hotel)."?