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“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.”

“We are losing all fear of those violent emotional storms which sometimes cross our alcoholic world; perhaps it bespeaks our confidence that every storm will be followed by a calm; a calm which is more understanding, more compassionate, more tolerant than any we ever knew before.”

“I can’t imagine anything that would make me so mad, glad, or sad that I would want to go back to what I was before AA.”

“In AA, we discover that it is impossible to give without receiving, or receive without giving.”

“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!’”

“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.”

“The AA program does not recognize walls. It is immune to the conditions which break down an individual relationship, the difference in social levels, of intellect, of experience. AA takes no heed of this. It has one primary law, help your fellow man and do it by example rather than by instruction.”

“AA's greatest power is not in the program itself, but in the examples of the men [and women] who have followed it.”

“During days and nights of darkness as I face the demons of self, the knowledge that my God is always in charge keeps me trudging to the end of each journey. With God, AA, and willingness I can meet the other me and begin putting my fractured self together again.”

“I’m still mystified by how I got sober, and the only answer that makes sense is that I stopped drinking through the grace of God. I was thinking about the difference between those of us who get sober and those who are still drinking, and I believe the difference is that we have accepted the grace that was offered. Every day, my Higher Power gives me the grace to be sober, and every day I make the choice not to drink, to accept the grace.”

“While I have years of sobriety, I really only have this day.”

“AA works on all kinds of nuts (including myself). I just needed to find the right wrench.”

“Sometimes I wonder if this illness isn’t a gift rather than a problem.”

“I believe most of us would agree that the general idea of anonymity is sound, because it encourages alcoholics and the families of alcoholics to approach us for help. Still fearful of being stigmatized, they regard our anonymity as an assurance their problems will be kept confidential; that the alcoholic skeleton in the family closet will not wander in the streets.”

“My home group's primary purpose is to carry the AA message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Some of those have much sobriety, because the alcoholic who still suffers is not necessarily a newcomer. However, when newcomers do show up at our home group we try to focus our discussion on what's in the Big Book and how it can help them if they are willing to follow some simple suggestions.”