“The temporary security of material things is a hollow shelter if built at the expense of spiritual growth.”

“Tradition Six enjoins the group never to go into business nor ever to lend the AA name or money credit to any ‘outside’ enterprise, no matter how good ... We would thus divide the spiritual from the material, confine the AA movement to its sole aim and insure (however wealthy as individuals we may become) that AA itself shall always remain poor. We dare not risk the distractions of corporate wealth.”

“Even though some of the ghosts of the past may still be spooking around, popping up from time to time to scare me, today I can pretty much handle them. Today the only real monster I have to face is myself, that part of me that tries to urge me back to drinking.”

“I know that my errors of yesterday still have their effect; that my shortcomings of today may likewise affect our future. So it is, with each and all of us.”

“Tolerance is the art of seeing yourself as others see you -- and not getting mad about it.”

“I have no secrets, and I fear no man. I am not anxious about death. I am alive, forever, within this 24 hours.”

“I no longer feel isolated, alone or without purpose. I feel like life is going somewhere, and I don’t feel like I have to know where.”

“Today, there are hundreds of [AA] centers shedding their warm illumination upon the lives of thousands, lighting the dark shoals where the stranded and hopeless lie breaking up -- those fingers of light already stretching to our beachheads in other lands. “Now comes another lighted lamp -- this little newspaper called the Grapevine. May its rays of hope and experience ever fall upon the current of our AA life and one day illumine every dark corner of this alcoholic world.”

“As devastatingly difficult as they have been, the last two years have been a giant Seventh Tradition workshop. Never in my married life or in any time before it had I truly understood what being self-supporting meant. I had relied on others to take care of me, not just financially, but emotionally and spiritually, too, and I let my life go to hell if they didn’t.”

“Today I think I can trace a clear linkage between my guilt and my pride. Both of them were certainly attention-getters. In pride I could say, ‘Look at me, I am wonderful.’ In guilt I would moan, ‘I’m awful.’ Therefore guilt is really the reverse of the coin of pride. Guilt aims at self-destruction, and pride aims at the destruction of others.”

“My sponsor told me that if I stayed away from the first drink a day at a time and followed the suggested Twelve Steps, I could lead a sober life. She didn’t promise me health, wealth, happiness, love -- or comfort. All she promised me was sobriety! Thank goodness, she didn’t promise me anything else, because along the AA path I have found sickness, death, unhappiness, and considerable discomfort. But I have also found the greatest joy, love, and happiness of my life.”

“The simple word ‘we’ stands at the entrance to the Steps, reminding me that my power is limited.”

“If you sponsor people, you’ll never need a mirror.”

“Let us AAs no longer be takers from society. Instead, let us be givers.”

“Many of us think today the main problem of Alcoholics Anonymous is this: How, as a movement, shall we maintain our humility -- and so our unity -- in the face of what the world calls a great triumph? Perhaps we need not look far afield for an answer. We need only adapt and apply to our group life those principles upon which each of us has founded his own recovery.”