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

“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.”

“AA works on all kinds of nuts (including myself). I just needed to find the right wrench.”

“I sabotage myself if I attach my sobriety to people, places, or things.”

“Only the sharing of despair can bring us ... illumination.”

“No matter how truthful the words of my message, there could be no deep communication if what I said and did was colored by pride, arrogance, intolerance, resentment, imprudence, or desire for personal acclaim -- even though I was largely unconscious of these attitudes.”

“Some of us take a long time to ‘come to’ before we can ‘come to believe’ that there is any hope for us.”

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”

“In the first six months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not a one responded. Yet this work kept me sober.”

“AA’s message promises healing and wholeness for any alcoholic who will pay the price. The price is simply to accept the help that will save our lives.”

“What I did need and need desperately, was not more knowledge about God, but, with God’s help, a deep and penetrating knowledge about myself.”

“Emotional balance is very much like balancing on a bicycle -- it is more a matter of what I don’t do than what I do do ... Watch someone balance on a bike. It looks as if it would be difficult, but, in fact, it is a mindless and effortless achievement. Happiness, joy, and freedom are the same, aren’t they?”

“I’m glad we have both conservatives and enthusiasts. They teach us much. The conservative will surely see to it that the AA movement never gets overly organized. But the promoter will continue to remind us of our terrific obligation to the newcomer and to those hundreds of thousands of alcoholics still waiting all over the world to hear of AA.”

“It was long indeed before we knew that AA could surely cross all boundaries of distance, race, creed, or language ... We know now it is only a question of time when every alcoholic in the world will have as good a chance to stay alive and happy as we have had here in America.”