"I studied economics and business as well as law. Potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course. At one of the finals I was too drunk to think or write."
Page 2, Bill's Story

"Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years."
Page 33, More About Alcoholism

"We who are familiar with the symptoms, see large numbers of potential alcohoics among young people everywhere. But try to get them to see it!" [In later editions, an * leads to a footnote indicating that there are more younger AA members than in the early years of the Program.]
Page 33-34, More About Alcoholism

Of the idea that knowledge of the disease of alcoholism will protect one from getting it: "That may be true of certain nonalcoholic people who, though drinking foolishly and heavily at the present time, are able to stop or moderate, because their brains and bodies have not been damaged as our were. But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception will be absolutely able to stop on the basis of self-knowledge. "
Page 39, More About Alcoholism

"He [an employer] might be shocked if he knew how much alcoholism is costing his organization a year. That company may harbor many actual or potential alcoholics. We believe that managers of large enterprise s often have little idea how prevalent this problem is."
Page 149, To Employers

12 & 12:

It is a tremendous satisfaction to record that in the following years [since the Big Book appeared] this changed. Alcoholics who still had their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. As this trend grew, they were joined by young people who were scarcely more than potential alcoholics.
Page 23, Step One