All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident. Facts are stubborn, and refusal to accept them does not avoid their inexorable effects-the tragic consequences are now upon us
Helen KellerCut off as I am, it is inevitable that I should sometimes feel like a shadow walking in a shadowy world. When this happens I ask to be taken to New York City. Always I return home weary but I have the comforting certainty that mankind is real flesh and I myself am not a dream.
Helen KellerThe true test of a character is to face hard conditions with the determination to make them better.
Helen KellerNow I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very important. . . The knowledge doesn't make life any sweeter or happier, does it?
Helen KellerOur 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 KellerThe best things in life are unseen, thats why we close our eyes when we kiss, cry, and dream
Helen KellerEvery optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.
Helen KellerI have visited sweatshops, factories, and crowded slums. If I could not see it, I could smell it. The foundation of society is laid upon a basis of . . . individualism, conquest and exploitation . . . A social order such as this, built upon such wrong and basic principles, is bound to retard the development of all. The output of a cotton mill or a coal mine is considered of greater importance than the production of healthy, happy-hearted and free human beings. We, the people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name.
Helen KellerWhen we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
Helen KellerToleration 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 KellerOptimism, 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 KellerThe world is sown with good; but unless I turn my glad thoughts into practical living and till my own field. I cannot reap a kernel of the good.
Helen KellerI learned that it is possible for us to create light, sound and order within us no matter what calamity befall us in the outer world.
Helen KellerIn times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.
Helen KellerEvery child has a right to be well-born, well-nurtured and well-taught, and only the freedom of woman can guarantee him this right.
Helen KellerThe breakage and agony rending us today will be our salvation if they drive us by new routes to meet it. No one can proxy for us a masterpiece of loving or experience for us the rapture of art or launch for us book ships freighted with sweet bread to strengthen man. As of old we must be our own seers, musicians and explorers, and to an extent vaster than ever before.
Helen KellerI wonder what becomes of lost opportunities? Perhaps our guardian angel gathers them up as we drop them, and will give them back to us in the beautiful sometime when we have grown wiser, and learned how to use them rightly.
Helen KellerTo keep our faces toward chance and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Helen KellerI think the degree of a nation's civilisation may be measured by the degree of enlightenment of its women.
Helen KellerIt gives me a deep comforting sense that Things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.
Helen KellerLong before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister's hand.
Helen KellerThe best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.
Helen KellerWe can drift along with general opinion and tradition, or we can throw ourselves upon the guidance of the soul within and steer courageously toward truth... We have a choice in every event and every limitation and....to choose is to create.
Helen KellerOnce 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.
Helen KellerI do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
Helen KellerSpeech is the birthright of every child. It is the deaf child's one fair chance to keep in touch with his fellows.
Helen KellerI am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily.
Helen KellerTHE most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me
Helen KellerThe one resolution, which was in my mind long before it took the form of a resolution, is the key-note of my life. It is this, always to regard as mere impertinences of fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom, like Aaron's rod, with flowers.
Helen KellerWhat a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!
Helen KellerI 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