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“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.”

“I had a really good reason for working Step Nine and making amends to my family and friends. I didn’t want a parade of people at my funeral singing, ‘Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!’”

“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.”

“AA is spiritual, is the eye of the hurricane, is my refuge and my comfort.”

“The individual must sometimes place the welfare of his fellows ahead of his own uncontrolled desires. Were the individual to yield nothing to the common welfare there could be no society at all – only self-will run riot; anarchy in the worst sense of the word.”

“I felt myself move with a new power, courage, and faith that, by the grace of God, I have acquired as a result of working the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“I am feeling much better now, and I thank God for AA and my good friends. I have learned how to accept their help.”

“My Higher Power works incognito, defying definition and requiring faith.”

“When I’m willing to pay the price for top-shelf sobriety, ‘action’ is still the magic word.”

“By admitting where I was at fault, I was given the ability to forgive ... With forgiveness came a freedom that I had not anticipated. The amends had required nothing but courage, and a faith that my Higher Power would carry me where I had been too afraid to walk alone.”

“I don’t need to project the future or cry about the past. Just live to the best of my ability, one day at a time.”

“We who live in the haven of AA cling together with an intensity of purpose which the outside world seldom comprehends. The anarchy of the individual melts away. Self-love subsides and democracy becomes a reality. We begin to know true freedom of the spirit.”

“Ever so slowly, I could feel myself changing. Things that had seemed important were no longer important. There was inside me a warming, a softening, a stirring, as the petals of a rosebud stir almost imperceptibly into a blossom.”

“The way our ‘worthy’ alcoholics have sometimes tried to judge the ‘less worthy’ is, as we look back on it, rather comical. Imagine, if you can, one alcoholic judging another!”