Although short "inspirational" sayings can be seen as trite or trying to offer simplistic, quick and easy advice, they can also carry important messages for adults and children that connect with them. Woody Starkweather shared. "I think these little sayings can play a powerful role in recovery from stuttering; they let the stutterer keep a simple idea in mind while going about the rest of life's business." (personal correspondence).

The inspiration for this paper came from an email sent to me by a friend who stutters, which obviously relates to risk taking -- something that we talk about in therapy.

I then posted a message to some discussion forums I subscribe to on the Internet, asking people to share inspirational sayings that they really liked. This "paper" consists of a collection of several sayings that were shared as "significant sayings" by people who stutter. Some are appropriate for anyone, including children. Others will have more meaning to adults and teens. Several are posted in various colored fonts. Making these is very easy to do with any word program. Perhaps those reading this paper will produce some for themselves from the inspirational sayings below.

A friend from England wrote, "My favorite ones mostly come from John 'Scatman' Larkin because I was a teen at the time. Here's a selection [of what he shared with me] that I dug out from old emails, phone calls and his lyrics that really cheered me up at the time (and still do -- almost a decade later)."

Confronting your stuttering will open the door to confronting every other obstacle in your life.


Follow the path of honesty and an open heart, and wonderful things will happen. You can be sure of that.

Take charge of your life's direction -- it's the bravest thing a human being can do.



Take it easy, you can slow down the pace . . . nobody ever won the human race.

A speech-language pathologist shared a bit of personal history about the next saying. She wrote, "I heard it the first and only time from a client of mine, a 63 year-old man who had suffered a brainstem stroke. He was very bright, observant, knowing, creative, and wise. Apparently, he thought I was much too fearful of life (I was.). He made that comment to me personally (slowly, laboriously typing it on a computer keyboard). He may even have created it for me. I have never heard it before or since. The saying helped open me to the richness of chaos." (personal correspondence)

Do things FOR yourself, but not BY yourself.

You can't be brave unless you're scared.

The world is like a mirror: frown at it and it frowns at you; smile at it and it smiles too.

The past is history. The future is a mystery. Now is a gift. That's why it's called The Present. (Loretta LaRoche)

Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes.

The brook would lose its song if we removed the rocks.

The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. (William Faulkner)

With Each New Day Comes An Opportunity For A New Beginning

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. (Charles Austin Beard)

Truth is a globe and a man sees only that part of it upon which, for him the light shines..

We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terribly loyalty. (G.K. Chesterton)

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. (Henry David Thoreau)

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take you eyes off your goal. Henry Ford

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist see the opportunity in every difficult. (Winston Churchill)

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. (Thomas Jefferson)

Every time you meet a situation, though you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you were before. (Eleanor Roosevelt).

We are, each of us, an angel with only one wing; we can only fly by embracing each other. (Luciano de Crescenzo)

Take it easy. Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy. (From "Take It Easy" by The Eagles).

If I hide myself wherever I go, am I ever really there?

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. . . The right time is now yours. The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have. (Henry James)

Change is like the wind. Fight it and it will sting you. Harness it and you can fly.

There is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves, and there is nothing which brings us greater joy and happiness than to think, to feel or to say what is ours." (Erich Fromm)

If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it's OK. But you've got to shoot for something. A lot of people don't even shoot. (Robert Townsend)

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. (Theodore Roosevelt)

One man with courage makes a majority. (Andrew Jackson)

Security is mostly a superstition. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. (Helen Keller)

Life is what happens to you when you are making other plans... ( John Lennon)

There may be many explanations, however there is only one description.

The key to a better future is you.

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. (Ambrose Redmoon)

Courage is about the management of fear, not the absence of fear. (Rudy Giuliani)

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. (Oscar Wilde)

To thine own self be true. (Shakespeare)

God, grant me the courage to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. (This is known as the "Serenity Prayer." Read the Serenity Prayer in your own native language -- from http://www.aahistory.com/prayer.html, with permission)