Last Updated: September 10, 2022 by Quote.cc Team
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist, and lecturer. She was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. We remember this genuinely inspirational woman — the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. Helen Keller dedicated her life to helping the conditions of the deaf and blind. Winston Churchill called her “The greatest woman of our age.”
Here are 100 Famous Helen Keller Quotes and sayings that will inspire you never to give up, regardless of circumstance. If you’d like to learn more about Helen Keller Quotes on life, vision, love, we’d recommend this fantastic read. And share these quotes as you will. Enjoy!
Below is just a sampling of Helen Keller quotes. Click on a heading to read more on what Helen had to say about these varied subjects.
100 Helen Keller Quotes to Empower and Inspire
Top 10 Helen Keller Quotes
“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” – Helen Keller
“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” – Helen Keller
“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.” – Helen Keller
“We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.” – Helen Keller
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” – Helen Keller
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.” – Helen Keller
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
Famous Helen Keller Quotes
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” – Helen Keller
“I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy, and an objective.” – Helen Keller
“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.” – Helen Keller
“What I’m looking for is not out there; it is in me.” – Helen Keller
“My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.” – Helen Keller
“There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.” – Helen Keller
“Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, and social justice can never be attained.” – Helen Keller
“Your success and happiness lie in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.” – Helen Keller
“What I am looking for is not out there; it is in me.” – Helen Keller
“People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.” – Helen Keller
“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.” – Helen Keller
“The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.” – Helen Keller
“It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.” – Helen Keller
“Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.” – 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
“Unless we can help the world where we are, we could not help it if we were somewhere else.” – Helen Keller
“God himself is not secure, having given man dominion over his work.” – Helen Keller
“Meanwhile the desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became less and less adequate, and outbursts of passion invariably followed my failures to make myself understood.” – Helen Keller
“No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.” – Helen Keller
“I am only one, but still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” – Helen Keller
“Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.” – Helen Keller
“Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them, but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.” – Helen Keller
“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller Quotes About Love
“You cannot touch love, but you can feel the sweetness it pours into everything.” – Helen Keller
“Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.” – Helen Keller
“All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” – 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
“Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.” – Helen Keller
“Once I knew the depth where no hope was and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. My life was without a past or future, and death a consummation devoutly to be wished. But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hands that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped up with the rapture of living. I do not know the meaning of the darkness, but I have learned the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller
“Things must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller Quotes About Life
“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” – Helen Keller
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
“Life is short and unpredictable. Eat the dessert first.” – Helen Keller
“Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.” – Helen Keller
“Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.” – Helen Keller
“A happy life consists not in the absence, but the mastery of hardships.” – Helen Keller
“When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life or the life of another.” – Helen Keller
“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
“We are never delighted until we try to brighten the lives of others.” – Helen Keller
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.” – Helen Keller
“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller
“No matter how dull, or how to mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.” – Helen Keller
“It all comes to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller Quotes About Education
“College isn’t the place to go for ideas.” – Helen Keller
“The highest result of education is tolerance.” – Helen Keller
“The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.” – Helen Keller
“What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.” – 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
“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.” – 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.” – Helen Keller
“The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.” – Helen Keller
“A good education is a stepping-stone to wealth.” – Helen Keller
“A child must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment before he takes with a will to the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way through a dull routine of textbooks.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller Quotes About Vision
“The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller
“As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.” – Helen Keller
“Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.” – Helen Keller
“I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.” – Helen Keller
“It is better to have no sight than it is to have no vision.” – Helen Keller
“The greatest tragedy in life is people who have sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller
“The worst thing in the world is not to be born blind, but to be born with sight, and yet have no vision.” – Helen Keller
“The worst thing is to be born sighted but to lack vision.” – Helen Keller
“The saddest thing in life is people with sight, but without vision.” – Helen Keller
“What could be worse than being born without sight? Being born with sight and no vision.” – Helen Keller
“I can see in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden.” – Helen Keller
“Worse than being blind would be to be able to see but not have any vision.” – Helen Keller
“Blindness is an unfortunate handicap but true vision does not require the eyes.” – Helen Keller
“The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel.” – Helen Keller
“I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.” – Helen Keller
“The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.” – Helen Keller
“When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people.” – Helen Keller
“What is worse than having no sight is being able to see but having no vision.” – Helen Keller
“The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.” – Helen Keller
“It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.” – 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
“Knowledge is love and light and vision.” – Helen Keller
“There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.” – Helen Keller
“As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.” – Helen Keller
“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller Quotes About Optimism
“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.” – Helen Keller
“I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a human-made world.” – Helen Keller
“It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.” – Helen Keller
“When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so regretfully upon the closed door that we don’t see the one that has opened for us.” – Helen Keller
“There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.” – Helen Keller
“We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.” – Helen Keller
“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.” – Helen Keller
“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… Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.” – Helen Keller
““Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller
” – Helen Keller
“I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force…this is my religion of optimism.” – Helen Keller
“Do not think of to-day’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.” – Helen Keller
“It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. ” – Helen Keller
“There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.” – Helen Keller
“Christmas Day is the festival of optimism.” – Helen Keller
“If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life. If, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.” – Helen Keller
“Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts.” – Helen Keller
“My optimism is grounded in two worlds, myself and what is about me. 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
“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
“The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller Quotes About Hearing
“When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people.” – Helen Keller
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller
“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller Quotes About Friendship
“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. 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.” – Helen Keller
“The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them.” – Helen Keller
“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.” – Helen Keller
“My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges.” – Helen Keller
“With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution to my being of happiness, strength and understanding remains to sustain me in an altered world.” – Helen Keller
“So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.” – Helen Keller
In Conclusion
What a remarkable woman Helen Keller was, and if you’d like what you have just read and would like to know more about this American icon, then I can highly recommend The Story of My Life by Helen Keller, which is a fantastic and insightful read.
Whether you know her story from books, movies or have just learned about the woman behind some of the world’s best-known quotes. We hope you’ve been inspired by these beautiful and insightful Helen Keller quotes. Which of these Helen Keller quotes was your favourite? Do you have any other Helen Keller quotes to share with us? Tell us in the comment section below.
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