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“I’ve likened that transforming instant, when despair gave way to a glimmer of hope, to a tiny flower sprung into bloom amid the bombed-out wreckage of my life. Thanks to AA, that tiny bloom was to become a garden.”

“Sobriety does interesting things to the mind – clears it up some, lets a bit of honesty and truth filter in, and begins to demand reality.”

“Sometimes taking somebody else’s inventory can be most beneficial. When I was doing my Fourth Step, an old-timer suggested I list the names of those against whom I held resentments, followed by two or three sentences describing what they had done to earn my displeasure. Then, after putting the list aside for a day, I was to cross off each person’s name and replace it with my own.”

“So long as there is the slightest interest in sobriety, the most unmoral, the most antisocial, the most critical alcoholic may gather about him a few kindred spirits and announce to us that a new Alcoholics Anonymous group has been formed. Anti-God, anti-medicine, anti-our recovery program, even anti-each other – these rampant individuals are still an AA Group if they think so!”

“When I go to a meeting today, I no longer have the delusion that I am supporting a good cause. I need AA; AA did quite well without me during my ten years of self-exile. I go to AA meetings today to hear and see how God is working. When I share at a meeting, it is not to try and ‘help’ those poor wretches, it is because I need their help and guidance.”

“AA is a caring community ... of people who understand how others can be trapped in deep loneliness and despair.”

“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.”

"We found that each of us had to make willing sacrifices ... for the common welfare."

“The spirit of AA has been with me ... for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.”