Helen Keller Quotes

“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.”

“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, hope, joy, set it free!”

“The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.”

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends.”

“Knowledge is love and light and vision.”

“The highest result of education is tolerance.”

“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.”

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

“People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.”

“There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.”

“I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”

“Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.”

“It is not possible for civilisation to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance its allotted length.”

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.”

“To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.”

“It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.”

“As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.”

“Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.”