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“There is very little in life that I must personally handle or that someone else couldn't do as well. On the other hand, no one else in the world can take my place at my meetings.”

“Throughout the world AAs are twelfth-stepping with thousands of new prospects a month. Between one and two thousand of these stick on our first presentation; past experience shows that most of the remainder will come back to us later on. Almost entirely unorganized, and completely nonprofessional, this mighty spiritual current is now flowing from alcoholics who are well to those who are sick. One alcoholic talking to another; that's all.”

“God has continued to send me many miracles since the first one occurred the day he gave me the courage and willingness to go to my first AA meeting.”

“In the fear of accumulated wealth and bureaucracy, we should not discover an alibi for failure to pay AA’s legitimate service expenses. For fear of controversy, our leadership should not go timid when lively debate and forthright action is a necessity.”

“When I've examined a situation all ways from Sunday, and the only thing I can see are bad consequences, then I can say, ‘God, I don't have the least idea what to do.’ That seems to be the magic phrase for me. Then something happens, and it is usually an action I hadn't thought of doing, and the result is good for all.”

“Learning is the very essence of humility. The two walk hand in hand. Humility, as I see it, grows out of an urge to learn from everyone and everything.”

“I, too, have tried a hand at governing AA. Each time I have strenuously tried it I have been shouted down; so loudly, in fact, that on several occasions it looked as though I was due for swift and certain excommunication!”

“Taking the Steps let me free my mind of the myriad troubles and concerns that we all have. I was able to quiet the incessant voices so that God could enter and start to solve my problems. I paid every bill I could -- not just financial bills but emotional and spiritual ones as well. By taking care of my debts, I've been able to remove them from my mind; they no longer occupy that space and control my thoughts. The Steps also show me that today, I must live up to own standards, not anyone else's. If I can live up to my own code, I can be comfortable with me.”

“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.”

“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.”

"“In our Twelve Traditions we have set our faces against nearly every trend in the outside world. “We have denied ourselves personal government, professionalism and the right to say who our members shall be. We have abandoned do-goodism, reform and paternalism. We refuse charitable money and prefer to pay our own way. We will cooperate with practically everybody, yet we decline to marry our Society to anyone. We abstain from public controversy and will not quarrel among ourselves about those things that so rip society asunder -- religion, politics and reform. We have but one purpose: to carry the AA message to the sick alcoholic who wants it. “We take these attitudes not at all because we claim special virtue or wisdom; we do these things because hard experience has told us that we must -- if AA is to survive in the distraught world of today.”"

“If we dwell on the past or the future, we put ourselves back into the torture chamber. We stop changing. Boredom, pain, and futility take over again. We have been ... We will be ... We no longer are. The 24-hour program disappears. Anxiety, anger, and a desire for revenge replace spiritual experience. Awareness and surrender cease. We are on a dry drunk.”

“The torch of Service did pass from the hands of us who are older to yours, which are younger; it passed to every oncoming generation of those children of the night whose darkness, God willing, shall be banished within the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous all through the bright years which destiny surely holds in store for us.”

“I went to my former employer and made my amends. What started out as one of my worst days -- because I was so scared -- became one of my best days when it was over.  Because I had trusted God, my sponsor, and AA that trinity had lifted the weight that was on my shoulders for so long. I felt sober.”

“Spirituality for me is not a question of feeling good (though feeling good is a feeling I like a whole lot). Instead it is a matter of finding from prayer and meditation, from other people, from meetings -- in short, from all the ‘tools of recovery’ -- the power to do what is good, what is healthy, what brings joy and healing to myself and others.”