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“Thelma told me that, no matter how much I feared making bad decisions, I could not learn how to make good decisions except by making decisions. ‘You’ll make mistakes,’ she said, ‘We all do. You will make some bad decisions before you learn how to make good ones. But what is true about good decisions is also true about bad ones: You will always learn from the consequences.’”

“How life looks to me depends on how I look at it. While this sounds simple, just like everything else in Alcoholics Anonymous, it requires continual practice in order to get good at it. I get better at it as each year passes. I am grateful that Alcoholics Anonymous is teaching me how to see straight, one day at a time.”

“Each day I turn my ongoing spiritual experience into a sane and happy usefulness among my fellow travelers.”

“We should question no one's transformation -- whether it be sudden or gradual. Nor should we demand anyone's special type for ourselves, because our own experience suggests that we are apt to receive whatever may be the most useful for our needs.”

“If I am truly going to grow along spiritual lines, I’m going to have to walk with the truest spirit of human compassion for others that I can muster in all of my affairs.”

“Sobriety for me was the complete life change that occurred after I fully invested myself in the AA program.”

“Today it is no longer about who cares for me, it is about learning to love others.”

“Change happens in sobriety and, big or small, I try to see where God wants me to fit in each day.”

“I don't know a whole lot about this sobriety thing. But what I do know is that I am deeply grateful. Grateful to Bill W. and Doctor Bob for beginning this thing and laying it all down for me in twelve, easy-to-follow Steps; grateful to the God of my understanding; grateful for my fellows with whom I share this journey; and grateful for my sponsor and my friends.”

“The day we begin working the Steps, the bottom becomes the foundation.”

“Faith is never a necessity for AA membership ... sobriety can be achieved with an easily acceptable minimum of it ... our concepts of a higher power and God as we understand him afford everyone a nearly unlimited choice of spiritual belief and action.” 

“I am easier led by example than ordered to obey. I am grateful to those who have shown me how [Tradition Two] works. Being a trusted servant is humbling. Being an equal part of a spiritual whole is enriching.”

“The Twelve Traditions were slowly evolved during an era when large-scale publicity was causing new groups to spring up like popcorn on a hot griddle. Many a power-driven ego ran hog-wild among us in those days, and it was the Traditions which finally brought order, coherence, and effective functioning out of the noisy anarchy which for a time threatened us with collapse." 

“I found a new definition of sanity. It was bigger than any definition I had heard concerning Step Two, but it was also bigger and better than my wildest imaginings. This sanity offered serenity, a feeling of wellness or well-being, possession of a center of balance from which to operate, and a feeling that my place in this world was just right.”

“Each group, as well as each individual, is a special entity, not quite like any other ... each group does have its own special atmosphere, its own peculiar state of development.”