30 Famous Helen Keller Quotes
Undeterred by deafness and blindness, Helen Keller rose to become a major 20th century humanitarian, educator and writer. She advocated for the blind and for women’s suffrage and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.
Born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller was the older of two daughters of Arthur H. Keller, a farmer, newspaper editor, and Confederate Army veteran, and his second wife Katherine Adams Keller, an educated woman from Memphis. Several months before Helen’s second birthday, a serious illness—possibly meningitis or scarlet fever—left her deaf and blind. She had no formal education until age seven, and since she could not speak, she developed a system for communicating with her family by feeling their facial expressions.
- “The highest result of education is tolerance.”
- “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
- “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”
- “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”
- “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
- “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
- “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
- “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.”
- “So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”
- “Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.”
- “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
- “Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
- “True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
- “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.”
- “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
- “We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.”
- “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”
- “What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.”
- “I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”
- “Knowledge is love and light and vision.”
- “Life is either a great adventure or nothing.”
- “We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.”
- “When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
- “The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.”
- “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.”
- “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
- “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.”
- “Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.”
- “While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.”
- “Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.”
