Common Readings

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

The final responsibility and the ultimate authority for AA world services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole fellowship. When, in 1955, the AA groups confirmed the permanent charter for their General Service Conference, they thereby delegated to the Conference complete authority for the active maintenance of our world services and thereby

Final responsibility and ultimate authority for A.A. world services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole Fellowship. The General Service Conference of A.A. has become, for nearly every practical purpose, the active voice and the effective conscience of our whole society in its world affairs. To insure effective leadership, we should endow

Our A.A. experience has taught us that: Each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority

Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority – a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern. The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

I am Responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there. And for that: I am responsible. Reprinted with permission of AA World Services Inc.

This we owe to A.A.’s future: To place our common welfare first; to keep our fellowship united. For on A.A. unity depend our lives and the lives of those to come. Declaration of the 35th Anniversary International Convention, 1970, Miami, Florida

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone-even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will