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“As I trudge the Road of Happy Destiny, AA holds my left hand, God holds my right, and I have no hands left to pick up a drink.”

“I learned ... that I was a sick man emotionally and physically. As every AA today knows, this knowledge can be an enormous relief. I no longer needed to consider myself essentially a fool or a weakling.”

“The word powerless ... described my situation with alcohol perfectly and completely. My life was more than unmanageable, it was illegal.”

“Each of us must conform reasonably well to AA’s Steps and Traditions, or else we shall go mad or die of alcoholism.”

“If it were not for the ‘we’ of AA, there would be no ‘I.’”

“By revealing our secrets and thereby ridding ourselves of guilt we can actually change our thinking and by altering our thinking we can change ourselves. What we will be tomorrow is determined by what we think today.”

“The AA message does not carry itself; somebody must carry it.”

“The most important thing AA has given me is the chance to get to know someone I never knew -- myself.”

“An old-timer once told me that he believed that AA was a great leveler: When you’re up high, your friends help bring you down a little bit. When you’re down low, they help bring you up a little bit.”

“My soul remained a mystery until my Higher Power settled inside me, appearing to me as a very real feeling of love and caring. Kindness slowly took precedence, and I became comfortable with the idea that I didn’t need a drink.”

“Those severe growing pains which invariably follow any radical departure from AA Tradition can be absolutely relied upon to bring an erring group back into line. An AA group need not be coerced by any human government over and above its own members. Their own experience, plus AA opinion in surrounding groups, plus God’s prompting in their group conscience would be sufficient.”

“Sponsorship is a bridge to trusting the human race, the very race we once resigned from. In learning to trust, we are strengthening our sobriety.”

“My sponsor ... gave me some good advice. ‘Take the words success and failure out of your vocabulary. Replace them with honesty and effort.’”

“I make a conscious effort to keep it simple, because the simpler I make it, the happier I become.”

“As an individual I am so small I’m almost totally meaningless in the universe; it’s almost as if I didn’t exist. But not quite ... As small as I am, I’m not totally meaningless.”