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
We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.
—Helen Keller
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, Feelings, Romance, Living, Heart
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
We still have it in our power to rise above the fears, imagined and real, and to shoulder the great burdens which destiny has placed upon us, not for our country alone, but for the benefit of all the world. That is the only destiny worthy of America.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Destiny
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
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
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
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
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Life and Living, Living
What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.
—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
There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Courage
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Hope, Achieving, Health, Positive Attitudes, Assurance, Faith, Achievement, Aspirations, Optimism, Confidence
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Brave, Patience, Sorrow, Grief, Optimism
Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure and material possession.
—Helen Keller
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Light
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
What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.
—Helen Keller
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
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
The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Christmas
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
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Peace
Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!
—Helen Keller
Topics: Wilderness
The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Teamwork, Teams
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
We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
—Helen Keller
Topics: Perseverance, Success, Endurance, Persistence, Resolve
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
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
—Helen Keller
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