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“I have learned how to place principles before personalities, begun to understand that it’s okay for me to be wrong, and that it is also all right for me to allow others to be wrong and to make mistakes. Learning to let go is a huge part of service work on all levels.”

“I have often seen our Society timid and fearful, angry and prideful, apathetic and indifferent. But I have also seen these negatives fade as the lessons of experience were learned and gladly applied.”

“My recovery relies on the hands of many people being extended to me. The welcome I received was more than a word. It was a word followed by actions.”

“I had been undergoing a spiritual experience without knowing it. My confused questioning about a Higher Power, my changed mental attitude, and even my physical recovery had all be part of a spiritual awakening. Without knowing it, I had been in contact with the source of life, whatever or whoever that might be.”

“Let today's troubles be sufficient to today.”

“Life hasn’t been all smooth sailing, but because of AA, I no longer have to live in fear. I sleep at night ... I have a purpose in life."

“We have, in AA, no coercive human authority. Because each AA, of necessity, has a sensitive and responsive conscience, and because alcohol will discipline him severely if he backslides, we are finding we have little need for manmade rules or regulations.”

“AA has taught me that I’m the architect of my own success or happiness. The quality of my sobriety is up to me – it will be what I want it to be.”

“The Twelve Steps are not steps to take progressively in order to arrive at a conclusion, but a code for living -- the constitution of a way of life.”

“If I simply let go of a character defect – release it – my Higher Power will replace it with a character asset. As I release anger, I find that I am friendlier. As I release hate, I become more loving. As I release fear, I become more secure.”

“Everyone must agree that we AAs are unbelievably fortunate people; fortunate that we have suffered so much; fortunate that we can know, understand and love each other so supremely well ... Indeed most of us are well aware that these are rare gifts which have their true origin in our kinship born of a common suffering and a common deliverance by the Grace of God.”

“I am learning, when looking for signs of spiritual awakening in myself, to look, not for bright lights or emotional upheavals ... but for sobriety, stability, responsibility, meaning, satisfaction, joy. These are the marks of the beginning of spiritual awakening.”

“It’s important to monitor my thinking, to be conscious of what thoughts I’m hugging to my heart, inviting to stay in my mind, encouraging to hang around my head.”

“The beginning of maturing for me was becoming willing to try to face the realities of my own life, a day at a time, and letting go of my childhood fantasies of living happily ever after in a perfect world made up of perfect people.”

“Not until I became aware that God’s delay is not necessarily God’s denial of prayer, was I willing to let a Power greater than myself determine how and when I was to receive the things I truly needed, rather than the things for which I howled.”