“From first to last, AA is a of program of action. It is not particularly useful for me simply to admit that some aspect of myself needs correcting and then to do nothing about it. Admission that something is the matter is the doorway to growth; but there will be no growth unless I follow up the admission with action.”
“Worrying about a situation won’t change it. I do all that I can and then give the rest to God.”
“I have sometimes felt I must apologize for my happiness ... I am vowing, however, to give loud support to successes, not just encouraging pats to troubles and failures. I now see successful living as a natural God-given by-product of successful sobriety. I say, go for it!”
“My desire to drink became a desire not to.”
“Beaten into complete defeat by alcohol, confronted by the living proof of release, and surrounded by those who can speak to us from the heart, we have finally surrendered. And then, paradoxically, we have found ourselves in a new dimension, the real world of spirit and of faith. Enough willingness, enough open-mindedness -- and there it is!”
“Believing that I was powerless ultimately reduced the size of my world -- down to me in the moment.”
“I was, am, and always will be powerless over alcohol. My life was, is, and always will be unmanageable. Today, because I'm a recovering alcoholic, that's okay.”
"“Every newcomer, every friend who looks at AA for the first time is vastly puzzled. They see liberty verging on license, yet they recognize at once that AA has an irresistible strength of purpose and action. ‘How,’ they ask, ‘can such a crowd of anarchists function at all? How can they possibly place their common welfare first? What, in heaven's name, holds them together?’
“Those who look well soon have the key to this strange paradox. The AA member has to conform to the principles of recovery. His life actually depends upon obedience to spiritual principles. If he deviates too far, the penalty is sure and swift; he sickens and dies. At first he goes along because he must, but later he discovers a way of life he really wants to live. Moreover, he finds he cannot keep this priceless gift unless he gives it away.”"
“AA has taught me that being ‘a small part of the great whole’ carries with it a responsibility and that there is always something that I can do to contribute to ‘our common welfare.’”
“There have been many times when I’ve felt inadequate to meet life’s demands, but AA and the Twelve Steps have always helped me find a way.”
“As a child, hearing my first symphony, I was lifted up into its indescribable harmony, though I knew little of how or whence it came. So today, when I listen for God's music of the spheres, I can now and again hear those divine chords by which I am told that the great composer loves me -- and that I love Him.”
“If the day comes that I do drink again, it will not be because I had no alternative. It will be because I had an alternative, provided by a loving God, but was unwilling to use it.”
“I have an AA friend, a good and gentle soul. He recently joined one of the great religious orders, one in which the friars spend many hours a day in contemplation. So my friend has plenty of time to take his inventory. The more he looks, the more unconscious self-deception he finds. And the more astonished he becomes at the elaborate and devious excuse-making machinery by which he had been justifying himself. He has already come to the conclusion that the prideful righteousness of ‘good people’ may often be just as destructive as the glaring sins of those who are supposedly not so good. So he daily looks inward upon himself and then upward toward God, the better to discover just where he stands in this matter of honesty. Out of each of his meditations there always emerges one dead certainty, and this is the fact that he still has a long way to go.”
“We shall often miscalculate the future in whole or in part. But even so, this will be far better than to refuse to think at all.”
“True morality has its inevitable compensations, for when we benefit someone we increase our own happiness.”
