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“Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity, or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine."

“By our Twelve Steps we have recovered, by our Twelve Traditions we have unified, and through our Third Legacy -- Service -- we shall carry the AA message down through the corridors of time to come.”

“We cannot grow very much unless we constantly try to envision what the eternal spiritual values are.”

“It seems to me that one of the major purposes of the last three Steps is to keep us from complacency, to keep us growing so that we don’t fall back into our old, sick ways and perhaps even into active alcoholism.”

“Mere change is not necessarily progress.”

“My sponsor told me that if I stayed away from the first drink a day at a time and followed the suggested Twelve Steps, I could lead a sober life. She didn’t promise me health, wealth, happiness, love -- or comfort. All she promised me was sobriety! Thank goodness, she didn’t promise me anything else, because along the AA path I have found sickness, death, unhappiness, and considerable discomfort. But I have also found the greatest joy, love, and happiness of my life.”

“Many of us think today the main problem of Alcoholics Anonymous is this: How, as a movement, shall we maintain our humility -- and so our unity -- in the face of what the world calls a great triumph? Perhaps we need not look far afield for an answer. We need only adapt and apply to our group life those principles upon which each of us has founded his own recovery.”

“I’m becoming so secure in AA, I’ve even discarded the cute, funny, phony me my civilian friends used to know. I don’t have to dance with a rose in my teeth; I can just dance. And I don’t have to be the only girl at the picnic who can swing Tarzan-style from a rope into the river. I can swim calmly, like the forty-year-old mother of four I am.”

“Let us AAs no longer be takers from society. Instead, let us be givers.”

“The simple word ‘we’ stands at the entrance to the Steps, reminding me that my power is limited.”

“If you sponsor people, you’ll never need a mirror.”

“I did not know what real happiness was when I came through the doors of AA. I needed someone to teach me.”

“Sobriety is a constant process of uncovering, discovering, and discarding.”

“By the fall of 1937 we could count what looked like forty recovered members. One of us had been sober three years, another two and a half, and a fair number had a year or more behind them. As all of us had been hopeless cases, this amount of time elapsed began to be significant. The realization that we ‘had found something’ began to take hold of us. No longer were we a dubious experiment. Alcoholics could stay sober.”

“The part of my job that always catches me off-guard is the palpable jolt of pleasure I get from the little ways to be helpful -- to be of service -- to others, for which they are so genuinely grateful.”