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“I, too, have tried a hand at governing AA. Each time I have strenuously tried it I have been shouted down; so loudly, in fact, that on several occasions it looked as though I was due for swift and certain excommunication!”

“Learning is the very essence of humility. The two walk hand in hand. Humility, as I see it, grows out of an urge to learn from everyone and everything.”

“Taking the Steps let me free my mind of the myriad troubles and concerns that we all have. I was able to quiet the incessant voices so that God could enter and start to solve my problems. I paid every bill I could -- not just financial bills but emotional and spiritual ones as well. By taking care of my debts, I've been able to remove them from my mind; they no longer occupy that space and control my thoughts. The Steps also show me that today, I must live up to own standards, not anyone else's. If I can live up to my own code, I can be comfortable with me.”

“Spirituality makes it possible for me to work for others and to try and help them. It can give me the courage to take good care of myself -- to go to meetings even when I don’t think I need a meeting, to speak up when my alcoholism wants to keep my pain to myself, to talk at a gut-honest level to my sponsor and to the people in my group about painful matters I would rather keep hidden.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“As never before the struggle for power, importance, and wealth is tearing civilization apart. Man against man, family against family, group against group, nation against nation.

Nearly all those engaged in this fierce competition declare that their aim is peace and justice for themselves, their neighbors, and their nations: Give us power and we shall have justice; give us fame and we shall set a great example; give us money and we shall be comfortable and happy. People throughout the world deeply believe that, and act accordingly. On this appalling dry bender, society seems to be staggering down a dead-end road. The stop sign is clearly marked. It says ‘Disaster.’

What has this got to do with anonymity and Alcoholics Anonymous?

We of AA ought to know. Nearly every one of us has traversed this identical dead-end path ... Then came AA. We faced about and found ourselves on a new high road where the direction signs said never a word about power, fame, or wealth.”

“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.”

“I can recall that even as a small child I had allergic reactions to certain forms of reality.”

“Alcohol robbed me of my adolescence. But I’ve learned to grow up in AA.”

“Spirituality for me is not a question of feeling good (though feeling good is a feeling I like a whole lot). Instead it is a matter of finding from prayer and meditation, from other people, from meetings -- in short, from all the ‘tools of recovery’ -- the power to do what is good, what is healthy, what brings joy and healing to myself and others.”

“The torch of Service did pass from the hands of us who are older to yours, which are younger; it passed to every oncoming generation of those children of the night whose darkness, God willing, shall be banished within the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous all through the bright years which destiny surely holds in store for us.”