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“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.”

“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.”

“I don’t just hear the slogans anymore; I feel them when I speak them ... They take hold of me; they change the course of my day if I let them.”

“I can remember ... how the agonies of alcoholism, the pain of rebellion and thwarted pride, have often led me to God’s grace, and so to a new freedom.”

"My recovery relies on the hands of many people being extended to me. The welcome I received was more than a word. It was a word followed by actions."

"I don't just hear the slogans anymore; I feel them when I speak them ... They take hold of me; they change the course of my day if I let them."

“I don’t just hear the slogans anymore; I feel them when I speak them ... They take hold of me; they change the course of my day if I let them.”

“I can remember ... how the agonies of alcoholism, the pain of rebellion and thwarted pride, have often led me to God’s grace, and so to a new freedom.”

"My recovery relies on the hands of many people being extended to me. The welcome I received was more than a word. It was a word followed by actions."

“It should be the privilege, even the right, of each individual or group to handle anonymity as they wish ... Each individual will have to decide where he ought to draw the line -- how far he ought to carry the principle in his own affairs, how far he may go in dropping his own anonymity without injury to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole.”

“Many ask ‘What is anonymity?’ and ‘What is humility?’ To me, they are almost the same thing. They are devoid of prestige; they demand nothing; they don’t ask to be ‘right’; they simply suggest that the icy egocentric elements in all of us retire into the background and that we wear the warm cloak of anonymity and humility and therefore, spirituality.”

“I am grateful that the people in AA showed me how to live sober. However, I have learned many things from other sources. I learned about quiet from the breeze floating through the grass on a warm summer day. I have learned unconditional love from my animals. I have learned how to have wonder of the world from my children. I have learned that all things have tremendous power.”

“I do not agree that the newcomer is the most important member at any meeting. In my opinion, equally important are those old-timers who showed me the way, and any middle-timer who may today be suffering. If newcomers are indeed the lifeblood of AA, old- and middle-timers are its skin and backbone. What a bewildered mess we would be in without them!”

“It should be the privilege, even the right, of each individual or group to handle anonymity as they wish ... Each individual will have to decide where he ought to draw the line -- how far he ought to carry the principle in his own affairs, how far he may go in dropping his own anonymity without injury to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole.”

“I am grateful that the people in AA showed me how to live sober. However, I have learned many things from other sources. I learned about quiet from the breeze floating through the grass on a warm summer day. I have learned unconditional love from my animals. I have learned how to have wonder of the world from my children. I have learned that all things have tremendous power.”