Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Helen Keller

94 quotes

“If the light were not in your eyes, dear Mr. Brooks, you would understand better how happy your little Helen was when her teacher explained to her that the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched but just felt in the heart.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1891 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Rev. Phillips Brooks (8 June 1891)
“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (8 July 1896), quoted in supplement to The Story of My Life
“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 (1880–1968) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Christmas in the Dark" in Ladies Home Journal (December 1906)
“The bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construction.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The World I live in (1910) chapter 8, The Five-sensed World Quoted in:
“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 (1880–1968) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Five-sensed World (1910)
“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.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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 o…
“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?”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter published in the Manchester Advertiser (3 March 1911), quoted in A People's History of the United States (1980) page 345
“Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle ... At the time the compliments that he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for Socialism he reminds me and the public that I am deaf and blind and especially liable to error.... The Eagle and I are at war. When it fights back, let it fight fair.... It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How I Became a Socialist", New York Call (3 November 1912)
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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., Part I: Withholding Treatm…
“It is the possibility of happiness, intelligence and power that give life its sanctity, and they are absent in the case of a poor, misshapen, paralyzed, unthinking creature.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Physicians", The New Republic (18 December 1915)
“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.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Strike Against War", speech in Carnegie Hall (5 January 1916)
“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 (1880–1968) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: My Religion (1927); later expanded and edited as Light in My Darkness (1995; 2000), Ch 6
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: We Bereaved (1929)
“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 (1880–1968) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: We Bereaved (1929)
“Many persons have a wrong of idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen Keller's Journal: 1936-1937 (1938), p. 57
“No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen Keller's Journal: 1936-1937 (1938), p. 60
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Let Us Have Faith (1940)
“Since my seventeenth year, I have tried to live according to the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. By "church" he did not mean an ecclesiastical organization, but a spiritual fellowship of thoughtful men and women who spend their lives for a service to mankind that outlasts them. He called it a civilization that was to be born of a healthy, universal religion—goodwill, mutual understanding, service from each to all, regardless of dogma or ritual.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Guideposts (June 1956); also in the second edition of Light in My Darkness (2000), an edited and expanded revision of her My Religion"' (1927)
“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 (1880–1968) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 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.
“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Henry More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Plattonist (1962) by Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, page 100
“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.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years (1967)
“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy", Joseph P. Lash (1980)
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than walk alone in the light.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy", Joseph P. Lash (1980)
“Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in the Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (13 April 2003)
“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.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. "Light! give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, so far as I can judge, self-love is the root of all evil”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Virgil is serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I began to read the Bible long before I could understand it. Now it seems strange to me that there should have been a time when my spirit was deaf to its wondrous harmonies ... But how shall I speak of the glories I have since discovered in the Bible? For years I have read it with an ever-broadening sense of joy and inspiration; and I love it as I love no other book.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Bible gives me a deep, comforting sense that "things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I read "King Lear" soon after "Macbeth," and I shall never forget the feeling of horror when I came to the scene in which Gloster's eyes are put out. Anger seized me, my fingers refused to move, I sat rigid for one long moment, the blood throbbing in my temples, and all the hatred that a child can feel concentrated in my heart.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the Judases, and even the Devil, are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall in due time be made whole.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part II: Letters (1887 - 1901) TO MRS. LAURENCE HUTTON Wrentham, February 20, 1898.
“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 (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. It is my service to think how I can best fulfil the demands that each day makes upon me, and to rejoice that others can do what I cannot. Green, the historian,[Life and Letters of John Richard Green. Edited by Leslie Stephen.] tells us that 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; and that thought alone suffices to guide me in this dark world and wide." p. 21”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that 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 (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I demand that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To what is good I open the doors of my being, and jealously shut them against what is bad. Such is the force of this beautiful and wilful conviction, it carries itself in the face of all opposition. I am never discouraged by absence of good. I never can be argued into hopelessness.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I trust, and nothing that happens disturbs my trust.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source