Helen Keller Quotes

219 Sourced Quotes

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 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
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight. True education combines intellect, beauty, goodness, and the greatest of these is goodness. When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

Helen Keller
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

Helen Keller
I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble.... the world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Helen Keller
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. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.

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

Helen Keller
Poverty is the fundamental cause of most of the physical, moral and economic ills of humanity.

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

Helen Keller
World peace will never come until the passion of supremacy is combated.

Helen Keller
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
What do I consider a teacher should be? One who breathes life into knowledge so that it takes new form in progress and civilization.

Helen Keller
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!

Helen Keller
I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought.

Helen Keller
Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

Helen Keller
I believe war is the inevitable fruit of our economic system.

Helen Keller
This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks.

Helen Keller
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.

Helen Keller
Many of us delude ourselves with the thought that if we could stand in the lot of our more fortunate neighbor, we could live better, happier and more useful lives.... It is my experience that unless we can succeed in our present position, we could not succeed in any other.

Helen Keller
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.

Helen Keller
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
Be happy, talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours.

Helen Keller
Few pleasures there are indeed without an aftertouch of pain, but that is the preservation which keeps them sweet.

Helen Keller
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Helen Keller
The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people.

Helen Keller
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Helen Keller
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Helen Keller
Fortunately, education does not depend on educational institutions any more than religion depends on churches.

Helen Keller
So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.

Helen Keller