Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Helen Keller Activist

  • Gender: Female
  • Citizenship: United States
  • Born: Jun 27, 1880
  • Died: Jun 1968

Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker. Her birthplace in West Tuscumbia, Alabama is now a museum and sponsors an annual "Helen Keller Day". Her birthday on June 27 is commemorated as Helen Keller Day in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and was authorized at the federal level by presidential proclamation by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, the 100th anniversary of her birth.

A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled and outspoken in her convictions. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other radical left causes. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

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

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

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

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

Alone we can do so little together we can do so much.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

True happiness... is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

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

Knowledge is love and light and vision.

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

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

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

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

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

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.

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

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.

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