Helen Keller Quotes

People are too prone to think that the actual is the limit of possibility. They believe that all that has been done is all that can be done.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

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.

I do not like the world as it is; so I am trying to make it a little more as I want it.

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

Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you...

I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy and an objective.

Many of us delude ourselves with the thought that if we could stand in the lot of our more fortunate neighbor, we could live better, happier and more useful lives. ... It is my experience that unless we can succeed in our present position, we could not succeed in any other.

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.

Silver is purified in fire and so are we. It is in the most trying times that our real character is shaped and revealed.

True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.

A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.

Self-culture has been loudly and boastfully proclaimed as sufficient for all our ideals of perfection. But if we listen to the best men and women everywhere ... they will say that 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.

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.

The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.

The wise fools who sit in the high places of justice fail to see that in revolutionary times vital issues are settled not by statutes, decrees and authorities, but in spite if them.

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.

Even if you have a problem, you don't need to be one.

If I could have only one of my senses then I would choose hearing, Then I wouldn't feel so all alone.

Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows.

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

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.

Do not think of to-day's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.

Be heroes in an army of construction.

Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the song of birds, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow . . . Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Glory in all the facts of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you.

I regard philanthropy as a tragic apology for wrong conditions under which human beings live.

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen?I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.… You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?

I don't want to live in a hand -me -down world of others' experiences. I want to write about me, my discoveries, my fears, my feelings, about me.

The joy of surmounting obstacles which once seemed unremovable, and pushing the frontier of accomplishment further — what joy is there like unto it?

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

The saddest thing in life is people with sight, but without vision.

Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

Next to a leisurely walk I enjoy a spin on my tandem bicycle. It is splendid to feel the wind blowing in my face and the springy motion of my iron steed. The rapid rush through the air gives me a delicious sense of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulse dance and my heart sing.

What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is.

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.

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.

A person who is severely impaired never knows his hidden sources of strength until he is treated like a normal human being and encouraged to shape his own life.

There's only one story, the story of your life.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Instead of being satisfied to alleviate suffering, we shall labor hard and continually to prevent it.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of the sunbeams.

Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

Every one of us is blind and deaf until our eyes are opened to our fellowmen, until our ears hear the voice of humanity.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. 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.

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.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

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.

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.

Look the world straight in the eye.

To get Congress to do anything.

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

It is curious to observe what different ideals of happiness people cherish, and in what singular places they look for this well-spring of their life. Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some in the pride of power, and others in the achievements of art and literature; a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds, or in search for knowledge.

What do I consider a teacher should be? One who breathes life into knowledge so that it takes new form in progress and civilization.

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.

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.

...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.