Helen Keller Quotes

I fall, I stand still... I trudge on. I gain a little... I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.

The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.

I prefer to stroll which has a buddy at nighttime, than by itself inside the light.

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

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.

Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, ‘Knowledge is love and light and vision.

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.

No nation is wise enough to rule another.

The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm. Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may be only the clinging touch of a child's hand; but there is as much potential sunshine in it for me as there is in a loving glance for others. A hearty handshake or a friendly letter gives me genuine pleasure.

Faith reinvigorates the will, enriches the affections, and awakens a sense of creativeness. Active faith knows no fear, and it is a safeguard to me against cynicism and despair.

We must not creep along when our souls cry out for us to soar!

Militarism. . . is the chief bulwark of capitalism. When it is that militarism is undermined, capitalism will fail.

We should not think of conversion as the acceptance of a particular creed, but as a change of heart.

If I, deaf, blind, find life rich and interesting, how much more can you gain by the use of your five senses!

Be happy. Talk happiness.

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.

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of the sunbeams.

The only real blind person at Christmas time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.

Ideas without action are useless.

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.

The human being is born with an incurable capacity for making the best of things.

To get Congress to do anything.

Joy is a spiritual element that gives vicissitudes unity and significance.

If you look toward the sunshine, you will never see the shadows.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

When all you can feel are the shadows, turn your face towards the sun. There is always a bright side - even if only that it is not worse...and it can always be worse

Death is no more than passing from one room into another.

I feel the flame of eternity in my soul.

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 all senses.

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.

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.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

I am just as deaf as I am blind. 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.

Life is to be lived as a magnificent adventure, or not at all.

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy and an objective.

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. To what good I open the doors of my being, and jealously shut them against what is bad. Such is the force of this beautiful and willful 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. Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.

If we believe that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy upon the hills and gladness in the fields.

Our beloved ones have not 'gone to a far country.' It is only the veil of sense that separates them from us, and even that veil grows thin when our thoughts reach out to them.

Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.

The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.

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.

What induces a child to learn but his delight in knowing?

I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every war has to me the horror of a family feud.