"I've learned that I am not responsible for anyone's happiness except my own. Most importantly, I learned that true happiness is an inside job."

"The leap of faith must be taken again and again over greater and greater distances."

"Had I not been blessed with wise and loving advisers, I might have cracked up long ago."

"AA may or may not get me to heaven, but it surely got me out of hell."

"I'm usually about eighty percent of the problem – well, maybe sixty percent, but the major part, you can bet on that. If I can leave out the largest percent (me), there is hardly any problem at all!"

"The experience of reality does not have to be postponed."

"Because each of us, at any moment, is the sum total of every choice he or she has ever made, it is not sheer fantasy to expect each day to be the very best day we have yet lived."

“These days I find that nothing is as precious as my sanity. I used to be addicted to drama and could only function on excitement and high levels of adrenaline. It’s very different today ... It’s all very ordinary and average and sane, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything”

“We have, in AA, no coercive human authority. Because each AA, of necessity, has a sensitive and responsive conscience, and because alcohol will discipline him severely if he backslides, we are finding we have little need for manmade rules or regulations.”

“AA has taught me that I’m the architect of my own success or happiness. The quality of my sobriety is up to me – it will be what I want it to be.”

“The Twelve Steps are not steps to take progressively in order to arrive at a conclusion, but a code for living -- the constitution of a way of life.”

“If I simply let go of a character defect – release it – my Higher Power will replace it with a character asset. As I release anger, I find that I am friendlier. As I release hate, I become more loving. As I release fear, I become more secure.”

“Everyone must agree that we AAs are unbelievably fortunate people; fortunate that we have suffered so much; fortunate that we can know, understand and love each other so supremely well ... Indeed most of us are well aware that these are rare gifts which have their true origin in our kinship born of a common suffering and a common deliverance by the Grace of God.”

“I am learning, when looking for signs of spiritual awakening in myself, to look, not for bright lights or emotional upheavals ... but for sobriety, stability, responsibility, meaning, satisfaction, joy. These are the marks of the beginning of spiritual awakening.”

“It’s important to monitor my thinking, to be conscious of what thoughts I’m hugging to my heart, inviting to stay in my mind, encouraging to hang around my head.”