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“My emotional bottom came in sobriety ... I actually had to sit and feel all those feelings I had worked so hard to drown out with alcohol.”

“I’m better able to love people when the storm of my judgmental mind settles, when I understand and empathize rather than criticize and condemn.”

“As AA grows, it is impossible to know everyone, but if I try to relate myself with just one other person, something will happen, something remarkable.”

“When we early AAs got our first glimmer of how spiritually prideful we could be, we coined this expression: ‘Don’t try to get too damned good by Thursday!’”

“One of the first insights Dr. Bob and I shared was that all true communication must be founded on mutual need. Never could we talk down to anyone, certainly not to a fellow alcoholic. We saw that each sponsor would have to humbly admit his own needs as clearly as those of his prospect.”

“Until I was at my complete bottom, alcohol wasn’t even my problem. But thankfully, when I did hit bottom, AA was not hard to find.”

“It was at my home group that I learned to trust the experiences of the early groups with meetings. We have a Traditions meeting once a month and when I was new and heard the Traditions read out loud, the experiences of the early AA meetings gave me the first notion that real people -- drunks like me -- started this program.”

“If I am in pain, it may be beneficial to me if I am aware of those in even more pain ... The answer for my pain is in the Twelfth Step.”

“If humility can expel the obsession to drink alcohol, then surely humility can be our antidote for that subtle wine called success.”

“Let it never be said that the spiritual way is a cowardly or escapist approach to life. On the contrary, it requires maximum diligence and persistence to seek divine guidance when all the evidence of our eyes and ears tries to tell us that life is largely physical, intellectual and emotional.”

“I used to think that having a pint was the only way to have fun; now I know that, for me, it's the only way to destroy the fun that I'm having!”

“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.”