Explore Quotes by Helen Keller

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.

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.

The world is sown with good; but unless I turn my glad thoughts into practical living and till my own field. I cannot reap a kernel of the good.

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."

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.

A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.

A good education is a stepping-stone to wealth.

The best preparedness is the one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them.

When one door closes, another one opens, but sometimes we wait too long looking at the closed door, and never realize that another door has been opened.

The bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construction.

What if in my waking hours a sound should ring through the silent halls of hearing? ... Would the bow and string tension of life snap? Would the heart over weighted with sudden joy stop beating for very excess of happiness?

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.

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.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

Once I knew the depth where no hope was and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free.

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.

Life is short and unpredictable. Eat the dessert first!

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.

I have visited sweatshops, factories, and crowded slums. If I could not see it, I could smell it. The foundation of society is laid upon a basis of . . . individualism, conquest and exploitation . . . A social order such as this, built upon such wrong and basic principles, is bound to retard the development of all. The output of a cotton mill or a coal mine is considered of greater importance than the production of healthy, happy-hearted and free human beings. We, the people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name.

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

A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers.