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
Your success and happiness lie within you. External conditions are the accidents of life, its outer trappings.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Joy, Success
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Peace
Relationships are like Rome. Difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the ‘Golden Age’, and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat itself until you come across a kingdom like Egypt…that thrives, and continues to flourish. This kingdom will become your best friend, your soulmate, and your love.
—Helen Keller
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.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Apathy, Attitude, Science
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.
—Helen Keller
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
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
We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists. So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives. No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius.
—Helen Keller
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.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Education
Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
—Helen Keller
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Confidence, Health, Achievement, Faith, Aspirations, Achieving, Assurance, Hope, Optimism
The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed.
—Helen Keller
The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Mentoring
Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.
—Helen Keller
Knowledge is love and light and vision.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Now, Vision, Love, Light, Knowledge
The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Christmas
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Risk, Safety, Danger, Security
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 most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Vision
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Aspirations, Goals, Meaning, Happiness, Purpose, Goal, Joy, Wisdom
Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Success & Failure, Success
What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.
—Helen Keller
Life is a chronicle of friendship.
Friends create the world anew each day.
Without their loving care, courage would not
suffice to keep hearts strong for life.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Friendship
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.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Obstacles, Difficulty, Experience
We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Resolve, Persistence, Endurance, Perseverance, Success
College isn’t the place to go for ideas.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Education, Universities, Colleges
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Beauty, Living, Romance, Feelings, Heart
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Pessimism, Discovery
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Security, Adventure, Risk-taking, Fortune, Danger, Action, Risk, Wishes, Living, Life, Persistence, Idleness
My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.
—Helen Keller
With the death of every friend I love a part of me has been buried,
but their contribution to my being of happiness, strength,
and understanding remains to sustain me in an altered world.
—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
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
It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Prophecy, Vision
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.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Happiness
I have often been asked, “Do not people bore you?” I do not understand quite what that means. I suppose the calls of the stupid and curious, especially of newspaper reporters, are always inopportune. 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; the hypocrisy in both cases is equally exasperating.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Disability
If we spend the time we waste in sighing for the perfect golden fruit in fulfilling the conditions of its growth, happiness will come, must come. It is guaranteed in the very laws of the universe. If it involves some chastening and renunciation, well, the fruit will be all the sweeter for this touch of holiness.
—Helen Keller
I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Sadness
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Light, Faith
Worse than being blind would be to be able to see but not have any vision.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Vision
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