“I learned that if I had the capacity to be honest, I would get better.”

“I continue to attend AA meetings because anything I know about recovery seems to have a shelf-life of 72 hours.”

“Sobriety in AA is the first thing in my life that has really worked.”

 “Instead of debating why so many old-timers are leaving, maybe our time would be better spent in taking more responsibility and letting the old-timers know how much AA wants and needs them... creating and maintaining environments and meetings that are attractive to their recovery.”

"Spirituality makes it possible for me to work for others and to try and help them. It can give me the courage to take good care of myself -- to go to meetings even when I don’t think I need a meeting, to speak up when my alcoholism wants to keep my pain to myself, to talk at a gut-honest level to my sponsor and to the people in my group about painful matters I would rather keep hidden."

“In the first six months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not a one responded. Yet this work kept me sober.”

“AA’s message promises healing and wholeness for any alcoholic who will pay the price. The price is simply to accept the help that will save our lives.”

“What I did need and need desperately, was not more knowledge about God, but, with God’s help, a deep and penetrating knowledge about myself.”

“Emotional balance is very much like balancing on a bicycle -- it is more a matter of what I don’t do than what I do do ... Watch someone balance on a bike. It looks as if it would be difficult, but, in fact, it is a mindless and effortless achievement. Happiness, joy, and freedom are the same, aren’t they?”

“I’m glad we have both conservatives and enthusiasts. They teach us much. The conservative will surely see to it that the AA movement never gets overly organized. But the promoter will continue to remind us of our terrific obligation to the newcomer and to those hundreds of thousands of alcoholics still waiting all over the world to hear of AA.”

“It was long indeed before we knew that AA could surely cross all boundaries of distance, race, creed, or language ... We know now it is only a question of time when every alcoholic in the world will have as good a chance to stay alive and happy as we have had here in America.”

“Alcohol robbed me of my adolescence. But I’ve learned to grow up in AA.”

“As never before the struggle for power, importance, and wealth is tearing civilization apart. Man against man, family against family, group against group, nation against nation.

“Nearly all those engaged in this fierce competition declare that their aim is peace and justice for themselves, their neighbors, and their nations: Give us power and we shall have justice; give us fame and we shall set a great example; give us money and we shall be comfortable and happy. People throughout the world deeply believe that, and act accordingly. On this appalling dry bender, society seems to be staggering down a dead-end road. The stop sign is clearly marked. It says ‘Disaster.’ “What has this got to do with anonymity and Alcoholics Anonymous? “We of AA ought to know. Nearly every one of us has traversed this identical dead-end path ... Then came AA. We faced about and found ourselves on a new high road where the direction signs said never a word about power, fame, or wealth.”

“I can recall that even as a small child I had allergic reactions to certain forms of reality.”

“A friend of mine told me about going to see the Statue of Liberty on a field trip with his grammar school class. He said that as they walked up the long spiral staircase, they all held hands in a line. He couldn't see the person at the beginning or the end of the line but he felt safe. He knew he was connected to the rest of his schoolmates. That's the way it is in AA. We can't see the people at the beginning of the line or the end of the line. But we know they're there -- and we know we're safe.”