Quotes by Helen Keller
Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Helen Keller. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Helen Keller
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and hearing after a bout of illness at the age of nineteen months. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan, who taught her language, including reading and writing; Sullivan's first lessons involved spelling words on Keller's hand to show her the names of objects around her. She also learned how to speak and to understand other people's speech using the Tadoma method. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, she attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She worked for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) from 1924 until 1968, during which time she toured the United States and traveled to 35 countries around the globe advocating for those with vision loss.
Keller was a prolific author, writing 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays on topics ranging from animals to Mahatma Gandhi. Keller campaigned for those with disabilities, for women’s suffrage, labor rights, and world peace. She joined the Socialist Party of America in 1909. She was a supporter of the NAACP and an original member of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1933, when her book How I Became a Socialist was burned by Nazi youth, she wrote an open letter to the Student Body of Germany condemning censorship and prejudice.
The story of Keller and Sullivan was made famous by Keller's 1903 autobiography, The Story of My Life, and its adaptations for film and stage, The Miracle Worker. Her birthplace is now a museum and sponsors an annual "Helen Keller Day". Her June 27 birthday is commemorated as Helen Keller Day in Pennsylvania and, in the centenary year of her birth, was recognized by a presidential proclamation from U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971 and was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015.
Keep your face to the sunshine and you can never see the shadow.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It's what sunflowers do.
True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do.
It is not possible for civilization to flow backward while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance its allotted length.
We may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.
The best Christmas gift of all is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up with one another.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
The best Christmas gift of all is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up with one another.
Jesus is the reason for the season!
From a little spark may burst a mighty flame.
The only blind person at Christmastime is he who has not Christmas in his heart.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
I realized that the wonder is not that conditions are so bad, but that humanity has advanced so far in spite of them. and now I am in the fight to change things. I may be a dreamer, but dreamers are necessary to make facts!
A beam from the everlasting sun of God.
Rude and unresponsive are the stones;
Yet in them divine things lie concealed;
I hear their imprisoned chant: --
We are fragments of the universe,
Chips of the rock whereon God laid the foundation of the world:.
Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.
I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.
It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.
This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil.
The tragic side of many architectural enterprises is that they destroy natural beauties which are a priceless possession and cannot be replaced.
I also dislike people who try to talk down to my understanding. they are like people who when walking with you try to shorten their steps to suit yours, hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating.
It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me.
What if in my waking hours a sound should ring through the silent halls of hearing? ... Would the bow and string tension of life snap? Would the heart over weighted with sudden joy stop beating for very excess of happiness?
Instead of being satisfied to alleviate suffering, we shall labor hard and continually to prevent it.
I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days during their early adult life. Darkness would make them more appreciative of sight; silence would teach them the joys of sound.
Speech is the birthright of every child. It is the deaf child's one fair chance to keep in touch with his fellows.
The clatter of a changing world is not pleasant, and those who have enjoyed the comforts and protection of the old order may be shocked and unhappy when they behold the vigorous young builders of a new world sweeping away their time-honored antiquities.
Serious harm, I am afraid, has been wrought to our generation by fostering the idea that they would live secure in a permanent order of things.
How spiritually blind are men that they fail to see that we are bound together. We rise or fall together; we are dwarfed or godlike, free or chained, together.
I fall, I stand still... I trudge on. I gain a little... I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.
If I could have only one of my senses then I would choose hearing, Then I wouldn't feel so all alone.
A simple, childlike faith in a Divine Friend solves all the problems that come to us by land or sea.
We should not think of conversion as the acceptance of a particular creed, but as a change of heart.
In the country one sees only nature's fair works, and one's soul is not saddened by the cruel struggle for mere existence that goes on in the crowded city.
Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister's hand.
Truly I have looked in the very heart of darkness and refused to yield to its paralyzing influence, but in spirit I am one of those who walk the morning.
THE most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.
The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it will not sacrifice for gain.
I, who have never heard a sound, tell you there is no silence, and I, who have never seen a ray of light, tell you there is no darkness.
It is always painful to set one's self against tradition, especially against the conventions and prejudices that hedge about womanhood.
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily.
Rebuffed, but always persevering; self-reproached, but ever regaining faith; undaunted, tenacious, the heart of man labors toward immeasurably distant goals.
Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation.
The worst thing in the world is not to be born blind, but to be born with sight, and yet have no vision.
The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm. Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may be only the clinging touch of a child's hand; but there is as much potential sunshine in it for me as there is in a loving glance for others. A hearty handshake or a friendly letter gives me genuine pleasure.
It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me...if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me.
In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice ... Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.
I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force…this is my religion of optimism.
During the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. If we have once seen, the day is ours, and what the day has shown.
Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations to beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.
Commercial concerns have expanded from family business to corporate wealth which is self-perpetuating and which enlightened statesmen and economists now dread as the most potent oligarchy yet produced.
Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful if the race was to survive. But now to preserve the race it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation.
Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.
I cannot but say a word and look my disapproval when I hear that my country is spending millions for war and war engines-more, I have heard, than twice as much as the entire public school system costs the nation.
The bible gives me a deep comforting sense that (things seen are temporal,and things unseen are eternal.
I hung about the dangerous frontier of guess, avoiding with infinite trouble to myself and others the broad valley of reason.
The million little things that drop into your hands, The small opportunities each day brings, He leaves us free to use or abuse, And goes unchanging along His silent way.
One's life story cannot be told with complete veracity. A true autobiography would have to be written in states of mind, emotions, heartbeats, smiles and tears; not in months and years, or physical events. Life is marked off on the soul by feelings, not by dates.
A child must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will to the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way through a dull routine of textbooks.
I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought.
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations.
The idea of brotherhood re-dawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed.
We the living, should not think of the dead as lonely because if they could speak to us, they would say: Do not weep for me, earth was not my true country, I was an alien there: I am at Home where everyone comes.
If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.
To keep our faces toward chance and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long in disappointment and bitterness at the closed door that we do not expectantly look for and therefore see with pleasure and gratitude the one which has been opened for us.
Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.
The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, -- the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience.
There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the Judases, and even the Devil are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall in due time be mad whole.
On Power:
It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.
You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play.
The richness of the human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome.
There is one universal religion, Helen--the religion of love. Love your Heavenly Father with your whole heart and soul, love every child of God as much as ever you can, and remember that the possibilities of good are greater than the possibilities of evil; and you have the key to Heaven.
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.
Is it not true, then, that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the World Beautiful? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
Believe. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted island, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
In a word, literature is my utopia.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.
You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.
For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine.
If the blind put their hands in God's, they find their way more surely than those who see but have not faith or purpose.
I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!
Cut off as I am, it is inevitable that I should sometimes feel like a shadow walking in a shadowy world. When this happens I ask to be taken to New York City. Always I return home weary but I have the comforting certainty that mankind is real flesh and I myself am not a dream.
As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so sex with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.
There is joy in self-forgetfulness. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness.
I wonder what becomes of lost opportunities? Perhaps our guardian angel gathers them up as we drop them, and will give them back to us in the beautiful sometime when we have grown wiser, and learned how to use them rightly.
We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world -- the company of those who have known suffering.
Literature is my Utopia.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.
I learned that it is possible for us to create light, sound and order within us no matter what calamity befall us in the outer world.
Some people are foolish enough to imagine that wealth and power and fame satisfy our hearts: but they never do, unless they are used to create and distribute happiness in the world.
Our beloved ones have not 'gone to a far country.' It is only the veil of sense that separates them from us, and even that veil grows thin when our thoughts reach out to them.
Gullibility is the key to all adventures. The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he who gets the most out of life.
The mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that 'W-A-T-E-R' meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, joy, set it free.
One should never count the years -- one should instead count one's interests. I have kept young trying never to lose my childhood sense of wonderment. I'm glad I still have a vivid curiosity about the world I live in.
If we believe that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy upon the hills and gladness in the fields.
Be happy, talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours.
Friends create the world anew each day.Without their loving care, courage would not suffice to keep hearts strong for life.
All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident. Facts are stubborn, and refusal to accept them does not avoid their inexorable effects-the tragic consequences are now upon us.
The power of effecting changes for the better is within ourselves, not in the favorableness of circumstances.
Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap-heap.
It is so pleasant to learn about new things. Every day I find how little I know, but I do not feel discouraged since God has given me an eternity in which to learn more.
Once I knew the depth where no hope was and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free.
For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to -- a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
When all you can feel are the shadows, turn your face towards the sun. There is always a bright side -- even if only that it is not worse...and it can always be worse.
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.
The things you do today that you don't have to do will determine who, what, and where you will be when it is too late to do anything about the things you should have done.
God doesn't promise security from life's storms but security in life's storms. God doesn't always call the equipped, but he will always equip the called. In the long run, avoiding danger is no safer than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
When I recollect the treasure of friendship that has been bestowed upon me I withdraw all charges against life. If much has been denied me, much, very much has been given. So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart I shall say that life is good.
Four things to learn in life: To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.
When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people.
I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower -- the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.
There will never be another now --
I'll make the most of today.
There will never be another me --
I'll make the most of myself.
We, the people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means we choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. We elect expensive masters to do our work for us, and then blame them because they work for themselves and for their class.
It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.
My friends have made the story of my life.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges.
I believe there are angels among us, sent down to us from somewhere up above. They come to you and me in our darkest hours, to show us how to live, to teach us how to give, to guide us with a light of love.
The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
