Helen Keller Quotes

219 Sourced Quotes

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
The attempt to suppress an idea has always and everywhere proved a failure.

Helen Keller
I want to say to those who are trying to learn to speak and those who are teaching them: Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles — a delight in climbing rugged paths, which you would perhaps never know if you did not sometime slip backward — if the road was always smooth and pleasant. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek. We shall speak, yes, and sing, too, as God intended we should speak and sing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helen Keller
Every one of us is blind and deaf until our eyes are opened to our fellowmen, until our ears hear the voice of humanity.

Helen Keller
We betray ourselves into smallness when we think the little choices of each day are trivial.

Helen Keller
I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility.

Helen Keller
It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and text of my mind.

Helen Keller