"You never know what you can do until you have to do it."
Betty Ford

"The search for human freedom can never be complete without freedom for women."
Betty Ford

"I've learned a lot about myself. Most of it is all right. When I add up the pluses and subtract the minuses, I still come out pretty well."
Betty Ford

"You never know what you can do until you have to do it."
Betty Ford



"My makeup wasn't smeared, I wasn't disheveled, I behaved politely, and I never finished off a bottle, so how could I be alcoholic?"
Betty Ford

"Captain Pursch ... gave me the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and told me to read it, substituting the words 'chemically dependent' for 'alcoholic.'"
Betty Ford

"And I have always told the patients when I talk to them. When they come around and say, "What will you have to drink? Oh that's right you don't drink." Just speak up and say, 'Of course I drink. But I just don't drink alcohol.'
Betty Ford



"But my activities have been pretty much focused in the last almost 30 years on the recovery, of my own recovery, the understanding for my family of my recovery."
Betty Ford

"I know I was an alcoholic because I was preoccupied whether alcohol was going to be served or not."
Betty Ford

"I really didn't want to have my name on the center, because it just seemed like it was too much of a personal thing."
Betty Ford



"This is a place where you can go, that you can feel safe and look inside yourself and discover yourself."
Betty Ford

"We're full all the time. And people do have good success and I think one of the programs at the center, the Continuing Care, helps them with their success. Because it's difficult the first year."
Betty Ford

"I think once I made up my mind that I was allergic to alcohol, and that's what I learned, it made sense to me. And I think it was kind of pointed out that you know if you were allergic to strawberries, you wouldn't eat strawberries. And that made sense to me."
Betty Ford