Works
Famous Helen Keller Quotes
Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched... but are felt in the heart.
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
Variant: Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
Source: The Open Door (1957) This quotation is often contracted into: Security is mostly a superstition... Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. or paraphrased: Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Helen Keller Quotes about life
Source: The Story of My Life: With Her Letters (1887 1901) and a Supplementary Account of Her Education Including Passages from the Reports and Letters of Her Teacher Anne Mansfield Sullivan by John Albert Macy
Helen Keller Quotes about the world
Helen Keller: Trending quotes
Edward Everett Hale in a statement published in A Year of Beautiful Thoughts (1902) by Jeanie Ashley Bates Greenough, p. 172; <!-- and perhaps as early as an edition of Ten Times One is Ten (1870) by Hale--> This has been misattributed to Keller in published works since at least 1980. Keller and Hale were good friends, and letters to Hale can be found in her youthful autobiography The Story of My Life (1902). In 1910 Keller dedicated her poem "The Song of the Stone Wall" to Hale who had died in 1909.
Misattributed
Variant: I am only one, but I am one. I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.
Helen Keller Quotes
Optimism (1903)
Context: 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 principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.
Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years (1967)
Context: Some people do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant. They are a thorn in the spirit. But I consider it a priceless gift and a deep responsibility to think.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
"Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy", Joseph P. Lash (1980) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/21/together/
Helen Adams Keller (p. 60. Helen Keller's Journal: 1936-1937, Doubleday, Doran & company, inc., 1938)
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 21
“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
Source: Address to the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (8 July 1896) http://www.afb.org/mylife/book.asp?ch=P3Ch4, quoted in supplement to The Story of My Life
“Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”
Variant: Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It's what the sunflowers do.
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 21
Context: Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as she stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful, unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruth's, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world.
“Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.”
"Strike Against War", speech in Carnegie Hall (5 January 1916) http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/helenstrike.html
Context: Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 4
Context: The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.
Quoted in, The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915, (1996), Martin S. Pernick, Oxford University Press, New York, NY., ISBN 0195135393 ISBN 9780195135398Part I: Withholding Treatment, ch. 4, Eliminating the Unfit: Euthanasia and Eugenics, p. 92, https://books.google.com/books?id=IJJVYrnImOsC&pg=PA92&dq=%22our+puny+sentimentalism%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=q2xmVd7AL4XPsAX43ICoAw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22our%20puny%20sentimentalism%22&f=false citing New York Call Magazine, Novermber 26, 1915, p. 5. https://books.google.com/books?id=gQfbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22call+november+26+1915%22++++black+stork&dq=%22call+november+26+1915%22++++black+stork&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d25mVfC4DoGLsQXDnYHgCg&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA Compare: "The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race." - Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History (1922), Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, p. 49. https://books.google.com/books?id=AdcKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA49&dq=laws+of+nature+require+the+obliteration+of+the+unfit+and+human+life+is+valuable&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q15mVcfBCsfusAX-0IDQCg&ved=0CCIQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=laws%20of%20nature%20require%20the%20obliteration%20of%20the%20unfit%20and%20human%20life%20is%20valuable&f=false ("Hitler thanked Grant for writing the Passing of the Great Race and said that 'the book was his Bible.'" See, Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (1994), Stefan Kühl, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195082605 ch. 8, p. 85, https://books.google.com/books?id=UGYfRv3DWuQC&pg=PA85&dq=Leon+Whitney,++bible+grant&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DmZmVdSkC4eRsAXtiIHQCw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Leon%20Whitney%2C%20%20bible%20grant&f=false Kühl cites: Leon Fradley Whitney (1894-1973), unpublished autobiography, 1971, Whitney Papers, APS, 204-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=NiX6ol8VO0oC&pg=PT264&dq=unpublished+autobiography+of+Leon+F.+Whitney,1971,+Whitney+Papers,&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VmlmVZz3BMX7sAXBjYAI&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=unpublished%20autobiography%20of%20Leon%20F.%20Whitney%2C1971%2C%20Whitney%20Papers%2C&f=false Compare also: "As a result of our modern sentimental humanitarianism we are trying to maintain the weak at the expense of the healthy," Adolph Hitler, as quote in A.E. Samaan, From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848, Create Space, ISBN 0615747884 ISBN 9780615747880p. 318. https://books.google.com/books?id=JkXJZtI9DQoC&pg=PA318&dq=%22As+a+result+of+our+modern+sentimental+humanitarianism+we+are+trying+to+maintain+the+weak+at+the+expense+of+the+healthy.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sGBmVa_UMMyqsAXeooGIAg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22As%20a%20result%20of%20our%20modern%20sentimental%20humanitarianism%20we%20are%20trying%20to%20maintain%20the%20weak%20at%20the%20expense%20of%20the%20healthy.%22&f=false
“I thought it strange that my teacher could not show me love.”
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 6
Context: I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word, "love." This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss me: but at that time I did not like to have any one kiss me except my mother. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spelled into my hand, "I love Helen."
"What is love?" I asked.
She drew me closer to her and said, "It is here," pointing to my heart, whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.
I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs, a question which meant, "Is love the sweetness of flowers?"
"No," said my teacher.
Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us.
"Is this not love?" I asked, pointing in the direction from which the heat came. "Is this not love?"
It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun, whose warmth makes all things grow. But Miss Sullivan shook her head, and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. I thought it strange that my teacher could not show me love.
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 6
Context: Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, "Think."
In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.
For a long time I was still … trying to find a meaning for "love" in the light of this new idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendour.
Again I asked my teacher, "Is this not love?"
"Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out," she replied. Then in simpler words than these, which at that time I could not have understood, she explained:
"You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play."
The beautiful truth burst upon my mind — I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others.
“But whatever the process, the result is wonderful.”
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 6
Context: I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it. Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.
Optimism (1903)
Context: The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness. Ancient prejudice of man against his brother-man wavers and retreats before the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in their own beliefs. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations.
“Optimism is the harmony between man's spirit and the spirit of God pronouncing His works good.”
Optimism (1903)
Context: I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God's world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good. I believe we should so act that we may draw nearer and more near the age when no man shall live at his ease while another suffers. These are the articles of my faith, and there is yet another on which all depends — to bear this faith above every tempest which overfloods it, and to make it a principal in disaster and through affliction. Optimism is the harmony between man's spirit and the spirit of God pronouncing His works good.
“The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.”
"Christmas in the Dark" in Ladies Home Journal (December 1906)
Context: The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart. We sightless children had the best of eyes that day in our hearts and in our finger-tips. We were glad from the child's necessity of being happy. The blind who have outgrown the child's perpetual joy can be children again on Christmas Day and celebrate in the midst of them who pipe and dance and sing a new song!
Optimism (1903)
Context: I, too, can work, and because I love to labor with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all. I used to think I should be thwarted in my desire to do something useful. But 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.
Optimism (1903)
Context: Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for to-morrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone. I should seek in vain for the light that does not visit my eyes and the music that does not ring in my ears. I should beg night and day and never be satisfied. I should sit apart in awful solitude, a prey to fear and despair. But since I consider it a duty to myself and to others to be happy, I escape a misery worse than any physical deprivation.
Optimism (1903)
Context: The idea of brotherhood redawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed; and thinkers of great soul like Lessing challenge the world to say which is more godlike, the hatred and tooth-and-nail grapple of conflicting religions, or sweet accord and mutual helpfulness. Ancient prejudice of man against his brother-man wavers and retreats before the radiance of a more generous sentiment, which will not sacrifice men to forms, or rob them of the comfort and strength they find in their own beliefs. The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood between sincere men of all denominations.
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 6
Context: I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word, "love." This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss me: but at that time I did not like to have any one kiss me except my mother. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spelled into my hand, "I love Helen."
"What is love?" I asked.
She drew me closer to her and said, "It is here," pointing to my heart, whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.
I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs, a question which meant, "Is love the sweetness of flowers?"
"No," said my teacher.
Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us.
"Is this not love?" I asked, pointing in the direction from which the heat came. "Is this not love?"
It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun, whose warmth makes all things grow. But Miss Sullivan shook her head, and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. I thought it strange that my teacher could not show me love.
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 6
Context: Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, "Think."
In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.
For a long time I was still … trying to find a meaning for "love" in the light of this new idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendour.
Again I asked my teacher, "Is this not love?"
"Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out," she replied. Then in simpler words than these, which at that time I could not have understood, she explained:
"You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play."
The beautiful truth burst upon my mind — I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others.
“I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it.”
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 6
Context: I had now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it. Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.
“I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word, "love."”
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 6
Context: I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word, "love." This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss me: but at that time I did not like to have any one kiss me except my mother. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spelled into my hand, "I love Helen."
"What is love?" I asked.
She drew me closer to her and said, "It is here," pointing to my heart, whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.
I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs, a question which meant, "Is love the sweetness of flowers?"
"No," said my teacher.
Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us.
"Is this not love?" I asked, pointing in the direction from which the heat came. "Is this not love?"
It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun, whose warmth makes all things grow. But Miss Sullivan shook her head, and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. I thought it strange that my teacher could not show me love.
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 4
Context: We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow 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, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me.
Letter to Dr. James Kerr Love (1910), published in Helen Keller in Scotland: a personal record written by herself (1933), edited by James Kerr Love. Paraphrasing of this statement may have been the origin of a similar one which has become attributed to her:
Context: The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus — the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.
Letter published in the Manchester Advertiser (3 March 1911), quoted in A People's History of the United States (1980) page 345.
Context: 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?
“Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought.”
"Strike Against War", speech in Carnegie Hall (5 January 1916) http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/helenstrike.html
Context: Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
My Religion / Light in My Darkness, Ch 6 (1927)
Context: 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.
Variant: Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and i learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
Source: Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad,. Northern women development. [Nigeria]. p, 351. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657.
Source: The Open Door (1957) This quotation is often contracted into: Security is mostly a superstition... Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. or paraphrased: Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 21
