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“My Higher Power works incognito, defying definition and requiring faith.”

“When I’m willing to pay the price for top-shelf sobriety, ‘action’ is still the magic word.”

“By admitting where I was at fault, I was given the ability to forgive ... With forgiveness came a freedom that I had not anticipated. The amends had required nothing but courage, and a faith that my Higher Power would carry me where I had been too afraid to walk alone.”

“I don’t need to project the future or cry about the past. Just live to the best of my ability, one day at a time.”

“Today, we enjoy a Fellowship which owes its ever-increasing membership of recovering alcoholics (unprecedented in human history) to the well-wishers and combined efforts of many outside agencies and services, as well as many professionals. To these folks, we surely owe a debt of gratitude.

“Yet, the heart of AA remains the same, thank God, when one alcoholic reaches out to another, and we find that we can do together what none of us could do alone.”

“They say love heals all, and I am confident the future is bright.”

“Everyone’s recipe for serenity is different. It’s like vegetable soup -- nobody makes it quite the same.”

“My sponsor taught me how to be of service with grace and gratitude. She taught me how to listen, how to be respectful, and most importantly, to mind my own business.”

“It doesn’t matter who or what God is if I can just remember it’s not me!”

“Should our present success continue, people will commence to assert that AA is a brand new way of life, maybe a new religion, capable of saving the world. We shall be told it is our bounden duty to show modern society how it ought to live ...

“Fortunately most of us are convinced that these are perilous speculations, alluring ingredients of that new heady wine we are now being offered, each bottle marked ‘Success’!

“Of this subtle vintage may we never drink too deeply.”

“‘How will I know if I’ve really hit my bottom?’ I asked at my home group. ‘When you stop digging,’ they told me.”

“I started going to meetings a little early and resisted the urge to bolt out the door the moment the Lord’s Prayer was finished. I thought I might try some of that ‘get active’ stuff, so I volunteered to make coffee at a meeting I liked to attend ... It wasn’t long before I found myself in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“Our resentments, anxieties and depressions were definitely caused, we claimed, by our unfortunate circumstances and by the inconsiderate behavior of other people. To our consternation, our sponsors didn't seem impressed ... They just grinned and said, ‘Why don't we sit down and take a hard look at all of AA's Twelve Steps? Maybe you have been missing a lot -- in fact, nearly everything.’”

“Alone in the town, I was scared to death of getting drunk. I was no longer a teacher or a preacher, I was an alcoholic who knew that he needed another alcoholic, as much as that one could possibly need me. Driven by that urge, I was soon face to face with Dr. Bob.”

“I can change my viewpoint anytime I want to. I can look at things from down, by lying back and waiting for someone to rescue me. Or I can stand tall and look at the way things are as the way they’re meant to be.”