In this post, we’ll read Helen Keller quotes who was an American author, lecturer, and political activist.
Helen Keller (1880–1968) was born with normal sight and hearing, but at the age of 19 months, she contracted an illness—likely scarlet fever or meningitis—that left her both deaf and blind.
Her parents sought help for her, and they hired Anne Sullivan, a young teacher, to work with her and the teacher taught Keller how to communicate using tactile sign language. She learned to read Braille, speak, and write, and she eventually attended Radcliffe College, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
With the help of her teacher, she made remarkable progress in her education and went on to write several books, including her autobiography, “The Story of My Life.” Helen Keller is considered one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.
Let’s read some of the best Helen Keller quotes on optimism, blindness, happiness and more.
Helen Keller Quotes on Optimism
1. “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
2. “My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.”
3. “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
4. “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”
5. “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
6. “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Happiness
1. “Be happy with what you have while working for what you want.”
2. “True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
3. “No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.”
4. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
5. “No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.”
6. “Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
7. “It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.”
8. “It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.”
9. “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”
10. “Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Life
1. “Life is short and unpredictable. Eat the dessert first.”
2. “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
3. “When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
4. “So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.”
5. “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.”
6. “Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.”
7. “When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
8. “Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.”
9. “It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.”
10. “Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.”
11. “What a strange life I lead— a kind of Cinderella-life—half glitter in crystal shoes, half mice and cinders! But it is a wonderful life all the same.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Deafness
1. “When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people.”
2. “I had known for a long time that the people about me used a method of communication different from mine; and even before I knew that a deaf child could be taught to speak, I was conscious of dissatisfaction with the means of communication I already possessed.”
3. “I had once believed that we were all masters of our fate–that we could mold our lives into any form we pleased… I had overcome deafness and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that anyone could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into life’s struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about… I learned that the power to rise in the world is not within the reach of everyone.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Blindness
1. “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
2. “The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the attitude of seeing people towards them.”
3. “I who am blind can give one hint to those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. ”
4. “What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.”
5. “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”
6. “Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”
7. “I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.”
8. “The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Courage
1. “The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends.”
2. “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.”
3. “We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.”
4. “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
5. “To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.”
6. “While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.”
7. “Every struggle is a victory.”
8. “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Success
1. “Do not think of todays failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.”
2. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
3. “Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
4. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
5. “Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles.”
6. “My work was practice, practice, practice.”
7. “True teaching cannot be learned from textbooks any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Gratitude
1. “So much has been given to me I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied.”
2. “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…”
3. “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.”
4. “Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Love
1. “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
2. “You cannot touch love, but you can feel the sweetness it pours into everything.”
3. “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”
Inspirational Helen Keller Quotes
1. “It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
2. “What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.”
3. “The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.”
4. “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.”
5. “Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart.”
6. “There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.”
7. “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.”
8. “The most beautiful world is always entered through imagination.”
9. “Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until she came—my teacher who was to set my spirit free.”
10. “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
11. “Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Friendship & Teamwork
1. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
2. “We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.”
3. “Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.”
4. “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”
5. “So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”
6. “The heart of a friend gives out sufficient light for us in the dark to rise by.””
7. “True friends never apart maybe in distance but never in heart.”
8. “Good friends walk in when the old ones walk out.”
Helen Keller Quotes on Education & Knowledge
1. “The highest result of education is tolerance.”
2. “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. ”
3. “What do I consider a teacher should be? One who breathes life into knowledge so that it takes new form in progress and civilization.”
4. “For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way.”
5. “Knowledge is love and light and vision.”
6. “My soul, conscious of new strength, came out of bondage, and was reaching through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and face.”
7. “Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.”
8. “College isn’t the place to go for ideas.”
9. “More than at any other time, when I hold a beloved book in my hand, my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free.”
These Helen Keller quotes inspire us to live our life to the fullest despite what challenges life throws at us.
Helen is remembered as a symbol of courage, resilience, and determination in the face of adversity, and her story became a beacon of hope and inspiration for generations to come.
Which of these Helen Keller quotes are your most favorite?
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