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“Through the Twelve Steps I was shown how to sweep aside the primacy of concern with self, to discard the selfishness and arrogance that stood in the way. All these were obstacles to love, and as I began to learn to turn my life and will over to God as I understood him, the first faint glimmerings of humility began to appear.”

“From the very first time I stepped into this room and joined this circle of chairs, I felt a powerful spirit. Each time I return here I feel this spirit and the beginning of a wonderful feeling of peace.”

“I can say no to a lot of things I’m not interested in. All the people-pleasing activities I used to engage in, I can cut out now. That gives me time to do the truly helpful, gut-warming little things, just because they need doing and I truly care. I have time to work my program.”

“In early sobriety, I remember moaning to another member about how I didn’t have a relationship, I didn’t have a new car, and I didn’t have a flashy job. He replied: ‘It takes a steady hand to hold a full cup.’”

“As early as 1945, mediating and giving suggestions by mail for the solution of group problems had put a tremendous volume of work on Headquarters. With most of the metropolitan AA centers, correspondence files had grown six inches thick. Seemingly, every contestant in every group argument at every point of the compass wrote us in this period.”

“AA and my Higher Power have transformed me from a complex person who lived out of her head to a simple person who is trying to live out of her heart.”

“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.”

“The day we begin working the Steps, the bottom becomes the foundation.”

“Faith is never a necessity for AA membership ... sobriety can be achieved with an easily acceptable minimum of it ... our concepts of a higher power and God as we understand him afford everyone a nearly unlimited choice of spiritual belief and action.”

“I am easier led by example than ordered to obey. I am grateful to those who have shown me how [Tradition Two] works. Being a trusted servant is humbling. Being an equal part of a spiritual whole is enriching.”

“The Twelve Traditions were slowly evolved during an era when large-scale publicity was causing new groups to spring up like popcorn on a hot griddle. Many a power-driven ego ran hog-wild among us in those days, and it was the Traditions which finally brought order, coherence, and effective functioning out of the noisy anarchy which for a time threatened us with collapse.”

“I found a new definition of sanity. It was bigger than any definition I had heard concerning Step Two, but it was also bigger and better than my wildest imaginings. This sanity offered serenity, a feeling of wellness or well-being, possession of a center of balance from which to operate, and a feeling that my place in this world was just right.”

“Each group, as well as each individual, is a special entity, not quite like any other ... each group does have its own special atmosphere, its own peculiar state of development.”

“What keeps me sober and serene is the very act of letting go of resentments, self-pity, fear of others, and whatever else keeps my thoughts going in circles about myself.”

“The sensation of fitting in for someone who has always felt like an outsider is an exquisitely rare feeling.”