Helen Keller Quotes

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.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

لقد توصل العلم لعلاج معظم الشرور، ولكنه فشل في علاج أسوأ هذه الشرور ألا وهو اللامبالاة تجاه النفس البشرية.

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee...

T he test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life.

Me parece que la mayor dificultad estriba en escribir con el estilo adecuado al grado de cultura de nuestra inteligencia y expresar nuestras ideas confusas, nuestros pensamientos mitad sentimientos que son los que reinan en nosotros, cuando todavía no somos, en cierto modo, sino un compuesto de tendencias instintivas. Escribir se parece mucho a intentar resolver un rompecabezas chino. Tenemos en la mente un dibujo que deseamos reproducir con palabras; pero las palabras no encajan en los huecos, o, si encajan, no concuerdan con el diseño. Pero seguimos intentándolo, porque sabemos que otros lo han logrado, y no estamos dispuestos a reconocer la derrota.

The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart. We sightless children had the best of eyes that day in our hearts and in our finger-tips. We were glad from the child's necessity of being happy. The blind who have outgrown the child's perpetual joy can be children again on Christmas Day and celebrate in the midst of them who pipe and dance and sing a new song!

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world 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.

I read them in the intervals between study and play with an ever-deepening sense of pleasure. I did not study nor analyze them — I did not know whether they were well written or not; I never thought about style or authorship. They laid their treasures at my feet, and I accepted them as we accept the sunshine and the love of our friends.

Character is not achieved by ease and quiet, it develops through trial and suffering

Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation.

Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.

All that we love deeply becomes part of us.

I think I have shown in my daily life that my feet are on the earth while the tips of my thoughts touch the stars.

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.