Recovery quotes
610 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside recovery — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"During any moment in which you're experiencing thoughts that make you feel sick or bad, do your best to change them to thoughts that support the idea of feeling good. Refuse to talk about disease, and work to activate thoughts that predict recovery and overall well-being."
"The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us."
"There are good people and bad people in all organizations fundamentally however, when you look at the basis of the Tea Party it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with an economic recovery. It has to do with limiting the role of our government in our lives. It has to do with free markets."
"I'm not a poster boy for good behavior and recovery in Hollywood, I'm just a guy who knows he has a lot to be grateful for."
"Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox."
"Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live."
"Pause and remember - You will have a lot more time and energy to spend on yourself when you stop worrying and wasting time on how others need to change."
"Pause and remember - At any moment you have the power to say 'this is enough' and radically change the course of your destiny. Have the faith and courage to follow your hearts calling."
"A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed."
"Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity."
"Your mind, this globe of awareness, is a starry universe. When you push off with your foot, a thousand new roads become clear."
"The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure - fearlessness and achievement."
"If we can’t puncture some of the mythology around austerity, politics or tax cuts or the mythology that’s been built up around the Reagan revolution, where somehow people genuinely think that he slashed government and slashed the deficit and that the recovery was because of all these massive tax cuts, as opposed to a shift in interest-rate policy - if we can’t describe that effectively, then we’re doomed to keep on making more and more mistakes."
"We cannot, in a moment, get rid of habits of a lifetime."
"What people think of you is none of your business."
"In the '70s, everybody thought drugs were just good times. People didn't really know about drug addiction, or that such a thing existed. When I grew up in the '70s I thought you had to take drugs. It was almost like I didn't think you had a choice."
"In this country, don't forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There's no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it's the worst kind of hell for those who love you."
"Jealousy always has been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed. I’ve had many years of recovery and therapy, years filled with intimate and devoted friendships, yet I still struggle. I know that when someone gets a big slice of pie, it doesn’t mean there’s less for me. In fact, I know that there isn’t even a pie, that there’s plenty to go around, enough food and love and air. But I don’t believe it for a second. I secretly believe there’s a pie. I will go to my grave brandishing my fork."
"He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy tranquil things of life. He had made mistakes, but he could overlook these. He had been a fool, but that could be forgiven. The time wasted--must be relinquished. What else could one do about it? Things were too complex, but they might be reduced to simplicity again. Recovery was possible."
"We're all looking at the people around us, the people who have gone before us who have succeeded in recovery and have long-term sobriety and they are an illustration for us of how good it can be."
