Helen Keller (1880–1968) was an American author, political activist, and educator. She was the first deaf and blind person to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Her legacy is one of resilience and steadfast courage, whereas her aid organization, Helen Keller International (est.1915,) remains active across the world.
Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller lost sight and hearing due to scarlet fever or meningitis when she was 20 months old. At age 7, she met her life-long teacher and companion, Anne Sullivan, who was 20 years old and herself blind. With Sullivan’s tutelage, Helen learned to communicate and pursue formal education.
Keller went to the Perkins Institute, then to a preparatory school, and then to Radcliffe College. Keller and Sullivan made the rounds on the lecture circuit, raising money for blind soldiers returning home from World War I. They went to Hollywood, where Keller starred in a movie about herself. Keller went on to become a famous speaker and author, political and social activist, and advocate for people with disabilities, women’s suffrage, and racial equality in America.
Keller’s truly inspirational autobiographical account, The Story Of My Life (1903,) narrates how she communicated with others and her experiences of discovering the beauty of nature and the ways of the world.
The story of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller has been depicted in William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker (1956,) originally a television play and later a Broadway play (1959) and a film (1962.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Helen Keller
My share of the work of the world may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious. Darwin could work only half an hour at a time; but in many diligent half-hours he laid anew the foundations of philosophy. Green, the historian, tells us that the world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Work
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.
—Helen Keller
Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Confidence, Assurance, Challenges
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.
—Helen Keller
We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Perseverance, Resolve, Persistence, Success, Endurance
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Life and Living, Living
The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Vision
There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Helping
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.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Literature, Books
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Contentment, Happiness
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.
—Helen Keller
Museums and art stores are also sources of pleasure and inspiration. Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble; and yet it is true that I derive genuine pleasure from touching great works of art. As my finger tips trace line and curve, they discover the thought and emotion which the artist has portrayed.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Museums
The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Christmas
Literature is my utopia.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Literature
I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heart-throbs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Art
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. Tolerance is the first principal of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Tolerance
Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Opportunities, Reality, Comparisons
Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
—Helen Keller
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.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Welfare
Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession.
—Helen Keller
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Togetherness, Unity, Ability, Teams, Teamwork
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.
—Helen Keller
Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived.
—Helen Keller
There is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Bible
Worse than being blind would be to be able to see but not have any vision.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Vision
To know the history of philosophy is to know that the highest thinkers of the ages, the seers of the tribes and the nations, have been optimists. The growth of philosophy is the story of man’s spiritual life.
—Helen Keller
Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities, and in its brief course I discern all the verities and realities of my existence; the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the spirit of beauty.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Wilderness
The million little things that drop into our hands, the small opportunities each day brings He leaves us free to use or abuse and goes unchanging along His silent way.
—Helen Keller
To think clearly without hurry or confusion; To love everybody sincerely; To act in everything with the highest motives; To trust God unhesitatingly.
—Helen Keller
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