Inspiring Quotes by Helen Keller

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 a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

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.

Resolve to keep happy and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.

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.

Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.

The best Christmas gift of all is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up with one another.

I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched. but are felt in the heart.

True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

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!

The worst calamity: 'To have eyes and fail to see.'

It is not possible to refer a complex difficulty to a single cause.

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.

How easy it is to fly on paper wings!

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.

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.

The tragic side of many architectural enterprises is that they destroy natural beauties which are a priceless possession and cannot be replaced.

Only in quietness do we possess our own minds and discover the resources of the Inner Life.

It is better to have no sight than it is to have no vision.

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?

Our worst foes are not belligerent circumstances, but wavering spirits.

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.

Christmas Day is the festival of optimism.

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.

I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every war has to me the horror of a family feud.

Smell is a fallen angel.

Smells are the fallen angels of the senses.

Through my handicaps, I have found my self, my work, my God.

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.

I don't give a damn about semi-radicals!

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.

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought.

It is always painful to set one's self against tradition, especially against the conventions and prejudices that hedge about womanhood.

I have made my limitations tools of learning and true joy.

The way forward is simple -- just follow Christ!

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.

Joy is a spiritual element that gives vicissitudes unity and significance.

My life has been happy because I have had wonderful friends and plenty of interesting work to do.

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.

I will not just live my life. I will not just spend my life. I will invest my life.

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.

Health in all lands is among the indispensable guarantees of human progress.

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 hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

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.