Helen Keller (1880–1968) overcame deafness and blindness to become the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College in 1904. Guided by teacher Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to communicate using Braille, tactile sign language, and speech. A prolific author, Keller’s autobiography, “The Story of My Life,” was published in 1903. She became a passionate advocate for disability rights, and women’s suffrage, and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. Keller’s remarkable life serves as an enduring inspiration for overcoming adversity and making significant societal contributions.
Helen Keller Quotes
1. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
— Helen Keller
2. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
— Helen Keller
3. “Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.”
— Helen Keller
4. “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
— Helen Keller
5. “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”
— Helen Keller
6. “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
7. “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
— Helen Keller
8. “What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
— Helen Keller
9. “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
— Helen Keller
10. “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
— Helen Keller
11. “The highest result of education is tolerance.”
— Helen Keller
12. “Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”
— Helen Keller
13. “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
14. “Ideas without action are useless.”
— Helen Keller
15. “True friends never apart maybe in distance but never in heart.”
— Helen Keller
16. “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”
— Helen Keller
17. “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
18. “Life is short and unpredictable. Eat the dessert first!”
— Helen Keller
19. “We can do anything we want as long as we stick to it long enough.”
— Helen Keller
20. “We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.”
— Helen Keller
21. “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”
— Helen Keller
22. “A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers.”
— Helen Keller
23. “The place between your comfort zone and your dream is where life takes place.”
— Helen Keller
24. “The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
— Helen Keller
25. “Happiness does not come from without, it comes from within.”
— Helen Keller
26. “Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
— Helen Keller
27. “There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.”
— Helen Keller
28. “What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.”
— Helen Keller
29. “Blindness separates us from things but deafness separates us from people.”
— Helen Keller
30. “I believe there are angels among us, sent down to us from somewhere up above. They come to you and me in our darkest hours, to show us how to live, to teach us how to give, to guide us with a light of love.”
— Helen Keller
31. “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”
— Helen Keller
32. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
— Helen Keller
33. “Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.”
— Helen Keller
34. “I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.”
— Helen Keller
35. “The best things in life are unseen, thats why we close our eyes when we kiss, cry, and dream.”
— Helen Keller
36. “Happiness is a state of mind, and depends very little on outward circumstances.”
— Helen Keller
37. “You will succeed if you persevere; and you will find joy in overcoming obstacles.”
— Helen Keller
38. “My friends have made the story of my life.”
— Helen Keller
39. “We should respect all people.”
— Helen Keller
40. “All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.”
— Helen Keller
41. “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”
— Helen Keller
42. “Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.”
— Helen Keller
43. “Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows.”
— Helen Keller
44. “Better to be blind and see with your heart, than to have two good eyes and see nothing.”
— Helen Keller
45. “Your success and happiness lie in you.”
— Helen Keller
46. “So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.”
— Helen Keller
47. “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
48. “A good education is a stepping-stone to wealth.”
— Helen Keller
49. “Making a mistake is falling down; failure is not getting up again.”
— Helen Keller
50. “Oh, you think the darkness is your ally, but you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it.”
— Helen Keller
51. “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
— Helen Keller
52. “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
53. “There is no better way to thank God for your sight than by giving a helping hand to someone in the dark.”
— Helen Keller
54. “So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”
— Helen Keller
55. “Knowledge is love and light and vision.”
— Helen Keller
56. “My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges.”
— Helen Keller
57. “Silver is purified in fire and so are we. It is in the most trying times that our real character is shaped and revealed.”
— Helen Keller
58. “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
59. “When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people.”
— Helen Keller
60. “Fear: the best way out is through.”
— Helen Keller
61. “Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”
— Helen Keller
62. “It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.”
— Helen Keller
63. “Doubts and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.”
— Helen Keller
64. “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
65. “I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.”
— Helen Keller
66. “One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
— Helen Keller
67. “To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.”
— Helen Keller
68. “So much has been given to me I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied.”
— Helen Keller
69. “What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is.”
— Helen Keller
70. “Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.”
— Helen Keller
71. “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
72. “Literature is my Utopia.”
— Helen Keller
73. “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.”
— Helen Keller
74. “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.”
— Helen Keller
75. “The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.”
— Helen Keller
76. “I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”
— Helen Keller
77. “I have made my limitations tools of learning and true joy.”
— Helen Keller
78. “Happiness is like the mountain summit. It is sometimes hidden by clouds, but we know it is there.”
— Helen Keller
79. “While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.”
— Helen Keller
80. “True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.”
— Helen Keller
81. “The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.”
— Helen Keller
82. “The true test of a character is to face hard conditions with the determination to make them better.”
— Helen Keller
83. “We are never really happy until we try to brighten the lives of others.”
— Helen Keller
84. “Be happy, talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours.”
— Helen Keller
85. “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
86. “Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.”
— Helen Keller
87. “Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge – broad, deep knowledge – is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.”
— Helen Keller
88. “I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.”
— Helen Keller
89. “I am only one but still i am one.”
— Helen Keller
90. “To keep on trying in spite of disappointment and failure is the only way to keep young and brave. Failures become victories if they make us wise-hearted.”
— Helen Keller
91. “Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.”
— Helen Keller
92. “One should never count the years – one should instead count one’s interests. I have kept young trying never to lose my childhood sense of wonderment. I’m glad I still have a vivid curiosity about the world I live in.”
— Helen Keller
93. “A smile goes a long way, but you must first start it on its journey.”
— Helen Keller
94. “The simplest way to be happy is to do good.”
— Helen Keller
95. “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
96. “Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.”
— Helen Keller
97. “If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.”
— Helen Keller
98. “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
99. “Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
— Helen Keller
100. “The way forward is simple – just follow Christ!”
— Helen Keller
101. “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
102. “No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.”
— Helen Keller
103. “The inferiority of women is man-made.”
— Helen Keller
104. “How spiritually blind are men that they fail to see that we are bound together. We rise or fall together; we are dwarfed or godlike, free or chained, together.”
— Helen Keller
105. “What induces a child to learn but his delight in knowing?”
— Helen Keller
106. “If I, deaf, blind, find life rich and interesting, how much more can you gain by the use of your five senses!”
— Helen Keller
107. “Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would become blind.”
— Helen Keller
108. “Do not think of todays failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.”
— Helen Keller
109. “Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.”
— Helen Keller
110. “There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.”
— Helen Keller
111. “Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.”
— Helen Keller
112. “To be blind is bad, but worse is to have eyes and not see.”
— Helen Keller
113. “Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities.”
— Helen Keller
114. “I 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 Keller
115. “Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.”
— Helen Keller
116. “It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.”
— Helen Keller
117. “Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.”
— Helen Keller
118. “When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance. And inevitably, we will feel about us their arms, their sympathy and their understanding.”
— Helen Keller
119. “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
120. “Ignorance, poverty, and greed must disappear so that light can prevail in all places.”
— Helen Keller
121. “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.”
— Helen Keller
122. “Be not dismayed; in the future lies the Promised Land.”
— Helen Keller
123. “I will not just live my life. I will not just spend my life. I will invest my life.”
— Helen Keller
124. “Even more amazing than the wonders of Nature are the powers of the spirit.”
— Helen Keller
125. “It was my teacher’s genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me.”
— Helen Keller
126. “The most beautiful world is always entered through imagination.”
— Helen Keller
127. “Speech is the birthright of every child. It is the deaf child’s one fair chance to keep in touch with his fellows.”
— Helen Keller
128. “When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
— Helen Keller
129. “No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.”
— Helen Keller
130. “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
131. “THE most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.”
— Helen Keller
132. “The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!”
— Helen Keller
133. “Blindness is an unfortunate handicap but true vision does not require the eyes.”
— Helen Keller
134. “If I could have only one of my senses then I would choose hearing, Then I wouldn’t feel so all alone.”
— Helen Keller
135. “I, who have never heard a sound, tell you there is no silence, and I, who have never seen a ray of light, tell you there is no darkness.”
— Helen Keller
136. “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
137. “It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.”
— Helen Keller
138. “To keep our faces toward chance and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”
— Helen Keller
139. “History is a record of the incessant struggle of humanity against ignorance and oppression.”
— Helen Keller
140. “Not the senses I have but what I do with them is my kingdom.”
— Helen Keller
141. “Words are the mind’s wings, are they not?”
— Helen Keller
142. “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
143. “Burn brightly without burning out. Throw your heart over the fense and the rest will follow. Keep your face to the sunshine and you wont see the shadows.”
— Helen Keller
144. “I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days during their early adult life. Darkness would make them more appreciative of sight; silence would teach them the joys of sound.”
— Helen Keller
145. “It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.”
— Helen Keller
146. “The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.”
— Helen Keller
147. “Some people are foolish enough to imagine that wealth and power and fame satisfy our hearts: but they never do, unless they are used to create and distribute happiness in the world.”
— Helen Keller
148. “I feel the flame of eternity in my soul.”
— Helen Keller
149. “We cannot freely and wisely choose the right way for ourselves unless we know both good and evil.”
— Helen Keller
150. “World peace will never come until the passion of supremacy is combated.”
— Helen Keller
151. “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”
— Helen Keller
152. “Your success and happiness lie within you. External conditions are the accidents of life, its outer trappings.”
— Helen Keller
153. “Character is not achieved by ease and quiet, it develops through trial and suffering.”
— Helen Keller
154. “We the living, should not think of the dead as lonely because if they could speak to us, they would say: “Do not weep for me, earth was not my true country, I was an alien there: I am at Home where everyone comes.””
— Helen Keller
155. “I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy and an objective.”
— Helen Keller
156. “Education should train the child to use his brains, to make for himself a place in the world and maintain his rights even when it seems that society would shove him into the scrap heap.”
— Helen Keller
157. “I never fight, except against difficulties.”
— Helen Keller
158. “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His works! Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”
— Helen Keller
159. “Only in quietness do we possess our own minds and discover the resources of the Inner Life.”
— Helen Keller
160. “There’s only one story, the story of your life.”
— Helen Keller
161. “The million little things that drop into your hands, The small opportunities each day brings, He leaves us free to use or abuse, And goes unchanging along His silent way.”
— Helen Keller
162. “I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.”
— Helen Keller
163. “When all you can feel are the shadows, turn your face towards the sun.”
— Helen Keller
164. “Poverty is the fundamental cause of most of the physical, moral and economic ills of humanity.”
— Helen Keller
165. “We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world – the company of those who have known suffering.”
— Helen Keller
166. “There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.”
— Helen Keller
167. “It gives me a deep comforting sense that Things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.”
— Helen Keller
168. “A person who is severely impaired never knows his hidden sources of strength until he is treated like a normal human being and encouraged to shape his own life.”
— Helen Keller
169. “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
170. “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.”
— Helen Keller
171. “I found that of the senses, the eye is the most superficial, the ear the most arrogant, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most superstitious and fickle, touch the most profound and the most philosophical.”
— Helen Keller
172. “Is love the sweetness of flowers?”
— Helen Keller
173. “If I write what my soul thinks it will be visible, and the words will be its body.”
— Helen Keller
174. “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
— Helen Keller
175. “The joy of surmounting obstacles that once seemed unremovable and pushing the frontier of accomplishment further-what other joy is there like it?”
— Helen Keller
176. “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
177. “I have found life so beautiful.”
— Helen Keller
178. “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than to outrun exposer. the fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
— Helen Keller
179. “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
180. “A man can’t make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.”
— Helen Keller
181. “The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the attitude of seeing people towards them.”
— Helen Keller
182. “My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.”
— Helen Keller
183. “The mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that ‘W-A-T-E-R’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, joy, set it free.”
— Helen Keller
184. “The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.”
— Helen Keller
185. “I am thankful that in a troubled world no calamity can prevent the return of spring.”
— Helen Keller
186. “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.”
— Helen Keller
187. “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
188. “The best-educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.”
— Helen Keller
189. “Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!”
— Helen Keller
190. “The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.”
— Helen Keller
191. “The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.”
— Helen Keller
192. “Look the world straight in the eye.”
— Helen Keller
193. “The human being is born with an incurable capacity for making the best of things.”
— Helen Keller
194. “If the blind put their hands in God’s, they find their way more surely than those who see but have not faith or purpose.”
— Helen Keller
195. “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
196. “No smile is as beautiful as the one that struggles through tears.”
— Helen Keller
197. “Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.”
— Helen Keller
198. “Poetry is the gate through which I enter the land of enchantment. Once inside the flaming wall, my limitations fall from me, and my spirit is free.”
— Helen Keller
199. “Every 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 Keller
200. “The things you do today that you don’t have to do will determine who, what, and where you will be when it is too late to do anything about the things you should have done.”
— Helen Keller
