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“The only way I ever found to displace a thought was to put another thought in its stead.”

“The temporary or seeming good can often be the deadly enemy of the permanent best.”

“No generation is a carbon copy of the previous one ... Young people in the meetings today are in many respects luckier: They have learned more in less time. If they seem to dwell at length on how they are feeling at the moment, it doesn’t mean they are less dedicated to stopping drinking one day at a time and practicing the Steps of the program. Nor does less shame, brought about by less stigma, mean less dedication.”

“An old-timer spoke about the danger of becoming complacent and explained the need for the Steps in her life. ‘The way I see it,’ she said, ‘I might have gotten the monkey off my back, but the circus is still in town.’”

“The first thing that captured me at my very first meeting was the way AA members talked with one another. There was a genuineness, something real there, that I wanted ... I saw they were sober and that they were honest with each other.”

“Although I have a lot of ‘yets’ out there, I have true friends who love me. All I need to do is call them and go to meetings and work my program, and for today the ‘yets’ won’t come.”

“The more I change, the more I hope the Traditions and principles of AA don’t change.”

“No prophet can presume to say whether the world outcome will be blazing destruction or the beginning, under God’s intention, of the brightest era yet known to mankind. I am sure we AAs well comprehend this scene. In microcosm, we have experienced this identical state of terrifying uncertainty, each in his own life.”

“At the end of each day ... I hope that I can say a short prayer of gratitude for another day of sobriety. Anything else good that happens is a bonus.”

“In despair, I had cried out, ‘Now I am willing to do anything. If there is a God, will he show himself?’ And he did. This was my first conscious contact, my first awakening. I asked from the heart, and I received.”

“I sometimes forget to feel gratitude for my sobriety ... This is why I must continue to work with others, to go to meetings, to be of some service to the world around me -- not because these are ‘good’ things, but rather so that I can once again be stimulated into feelings of gratitude for this life I have found.”

“I ask at the end of each day: ‘What should I have done better, not to win more money, but to feel more at peace with myself?’ Whatever it was, I can put it on the list as a clue to a defect of character. Despite all my experience, I do not find my list getting very long; what I see is the same faults creeping back in like crabgrass.”

“My desire to drink became a desire not to.”

“Few of us will ever be famous, but we can all be great because we serve each other.”

“Times change, alcoholism doesn’t.”