Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Helen Keller (American Author)

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

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
Helen Keller
Topics: Gratitude, Acceptance, Happiness, Blessings, Wonder, Appreciation

Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.
Helen Keller
Topics: Success, Success & Failure

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

As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
Helen Keller
Topics: Sex, Joy, Vision, Selfishness, Mind, Religion

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.
Helen Keller

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

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
Helen Keller

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.
Helen Keller
Topics: Service, Kindness, Giving

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

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Helen Keller
Topics: Spirit, Living Well

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.
Helen Keller
Topics: Suffering, Courage

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

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
Helen Keller
Topics: Queens, Kings, Royalty

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.
Helen Keller

Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession.
Helen Keller

Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.
Helen Keller
Topics: Bible

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
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

Who shall dare let his incapacity for hope or goodness cast a shadow upon the courage of those who bear their burdens as if they were privileges?
Helen Keller

The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.
Helen Keller
Topics: Teamwork, Teams

I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.
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

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.
Helen Keller

Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.
Helen Keller
Topics: Perseverance

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight… When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
Helen Keller
Topics: Patience, Effort, Doing Your Best, Excellence

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

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
Helen Keller

The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.
Helen Keller
Topics: Mentoring

God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His works.
Helen Keller
Topics: Security, Safety

We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
Helen Keller
Topics: Resolve, Persistence, Success, Endurance, Perseverance

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