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“My self-analysis has frequently been faulty. Sometimes I've failed to share my defects with the right people; at other times, I've confessed their defects, rather than my own; and at still other times, my confession of defects has been more in the nature of loud complaints about my circumstances and my problems.

Nevertheless, I think I've usually been able to make a fairly thorough and searching job of finding and admitting my personal defects ... Yet this pretty well-ventilated condition is nothing for self-congratulation. Long ago I was lucky enough to see that I'd have to keep up my self-analysis or else blow my top completely. Though driven by stark necessity, this continuous self-revelation -- to myself and to others -- was rough medicine to take. But years of repetition has made this job far easier.”

“I cannot do great things; but I can finish what I start.”

“Feelings are neither right nor wrong. It is what we do with them that we need to concentrate on.”

“I cannot give anyone the precious gift of sobriety; but I can listen to a newcomer's problems and tell her how it works for me.”

“Being painfully honest in the Fourth and Fifth Steps started me on the road to humility. I could finally accept myself as human and go to work on my varied defects of character (Step Six).”

“The program tells me that in order to recover I must be willing to develop a manner of living that demands rigorous honesty. So when I retire at night, I ask myself: Is there something that I should discuss with another person at once? What do I not want to share? Do I feel any guilt? Am I worried about something? Fearful? What was my thought-life like today?

These questions spur me to talk to someone. The more I share, the more I live in integrity; and the more I live in integrity, the more at peace I am with myself, and the more useful I can be to God and my fellows.”

“AA's greatest power is not in the program itself, but in the examples of the men [and women] who have followed it.”

“My home group's primary purpose is to carry the AA message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Some of those have much sobriety, because the alcoholic who still suffers is not necessarily a newcomer. However, when newcomers do show up at our home group we try to focus our discussion on what's in the Big Book and how it can help them if they are willing to follow some simple suggestions.”

“Each day I feel myself growing in recovery. I can honestly say I’m happier now than ever before in my adult life.”

“Through Step Five, God has removed my shame about being an alcoholic.”

“I can recognize that I’m caught up in my will when I desperately struggle to slam a square peg into a round hole. That’s the time for me to back off and trust that God’s will is far better than mine.”

“Over the years I've gone to different types of groups to meet different needs in my life or to share experience, strength, and hope about a particular problem I was struggling with. Some days I've been part of the solution for another suffering alcoholic; other days I've been the one who was suffering.

“Thanks to our Fifth Tradition, no matter what my needs or my location I can find an AA group where I can talk about -- and listen to -- not drinking one day at a time, practicing the principles in all of my affairs, and being happily and usefully whole.”

“The word ‘alcoholic’ does not turn me off anymore; in fact, it is music to my ears when it applies to me.”

“While wealth and authority lie at the foundation of many a noble institution, we of AA now apprehend, and thoroughly well, that these things are not for us. Have we not found that one man's meat is often another man's poison?”

“We are not a sociological entity, although sociologists find us fascinating. We are not a therapy group, although remarkable healing takes place among us. And we are not a religion, even though some people want to see us as such ... We are a spiritual entity.”