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“With each passing year we increasingly realize the immense importance of adequately presenting the program to every new prospect who is in the least inclined to listen. Many of us feel this to be our greatest obligation to him and our failure to do so our greatest dereliction. The difference between a good approach and a bad one can mean life or death to those who seek our help.”

“What I have learned in the past twelve years is that my relationship with God and my spiritual practice is the only answer, even when I’m not sure of the question.”

“For thousands of alcoholics yet to come, AA does have an answer. But there is one condition. We must, at all costs, preserve our essential unity; it must be made unbreakably secure. Without permanent unity there can be little lasting recovery for anyone. Hence our future depends upon the creation and observance of a sound group Tradition. First things will always need to be first: humility before success, and unity before fame.”

“It has been difficult for me to accept myself and some of my decisions ... But I’ve done the best I can with the information available, even if it might not be someone else’s best.”

“When I effectively practice my program, I am only a cheap dime-store garden hose carrying God’s message of hope, recovery, and forgiveness.”

“If each sufferer were to carry the news of the scientific hopelessness of alcoholism to each new prospect, he might be able to lay every newcomer wide open to a transforming spiritual experience.”

“If each sufferer were to carry the news of the scientific hopelessness of alcoholism to each new prospect, he might be able to lay every newcomer wide open to a transforming spiritual experience.”

"This issue of the Grapevine marks the anniversary of its founding exactly fifteen [now seventy] years ago. 
“The memory of some of those first editorial meetings will linger with me always. Seated around a table in a tiny cheerless room some place downtown, the founders pored over their freshly written copy for the first issues. In those days the enthusiastic founders did everything. Not only did they do the art work, write the bulk of the stories, they kept the books, they paid the printing bill, they typed the address on each copy and finally licked all the stamps. So went the happy monthly paroxysm of creating what was to become the principal monthly journal of our whole society.
“Today 35,000 readers [now over 100,000 across multiple media platforms] see mirrored in each issue of the AA Grapevine a monthly vision of the worldwide thought, feeling and activity of our whole fellowship. It is our great means of inter-communication; a magic carpet on which each of you can ride to the more distant reaches and watch new brothers and sisters emerge from darkness into light.
“On this happy occasion I send my warmest affection to Grapevine readers and staff alike. May God prosper the Grapevine always."

“This issue of the Grapevine marks the anniversary of its founding exactly fifteen [now seventy] years ago.

The memory of some of those first editorial meetings will linger with me always. Seated around a table in a tiny cheerless room some place downtown, the founders pored over their freshly written copy for the first issues. In those days the enthusiastic founders did everything. Not only did they do the art work, write the bulk of the stories, they kept the books, they paid the printing bill, they typed the address on each copy and finally licked all the stamps. So went the happy monthly paroxysm of creating what was to become the principal monthly journal of our whole society.

Today 35,000 readers [now over 100,000 across multiple media platforms] see mirrored in each issue of the AA Grapevine a monthly vision of the worldwide thought, feeling and activity of our whole fellowship. It is our great means of inter-communication; a magic carpet on which each of you can ride to the more distant reaches and watch new brothers and sisters emerge from darkness into light.

On this happy occasion I send my warmest affection to Grapevine readers and staff alike. May God prosper the Grapevine always.”

Schaumburg, Ill., March 2006, “Living Large,”, AA Grapevine

“Today, there are hundreds of [AA] centers shedding their warm illumination upon the lives of thousands, lighting the dark shoals where the stranded and hopeless lie breaking up -- those fingers of light already stretching to our beachheads in other lands. “Now comes another lighted lamp -- this little newspaper called the Grapevine. May its rays of hope and experience ever fall upon the current of our AA life and one day illumine every dark corner of this alcoholic world.”

“Today, there are hundreds of [AA] centers shedding their warm illumination upon the lives of thousands, lighting the dark shoals where the stranded and hopeless lie breaking up -- those fingers of light already stretching to our beachheads in other lands.

Now comes another lighted lamp -- this little newspaper called the Grapevine. May its rays of hope and experience ever fall upon the current of our AA life and one day illumine every dark corner of this alcoholic world.”

“I have learned through crises and through joy.”

“Nothing seems to help me more than being reminded where I came from, and the kind of person I used to be while under the influence of alcohol -- that sad, fearful, undependable sort of person I will become again, unless I start to focus on my needs instead of my wants.”

“Even in self-protection, we do not wish to erect the slightest barrier between ourselves and the fellow alcoholic who still suffers. We know that society has been demanding that he conform to its laws and conventions. But the essence of his alcoholic malady is the fact that he has been unable or unwilling to conform either to the laws of man or God. If he is anything, the sick alcoholic is a rebellious nonconformist. How well we understand that.”