45 Optimistic Quotes by Helen Keller

Last updated on Jul 2nd, 2023

45 Optimistic Quotes by Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller (born June 27, 1880, Tuscumbia, Alabama, U.S. – died June 1, 1968, Easton, Connecticut, U.S.) was an American author and lecturer who was blind and deaf. Her education and training changed the world’s perception of the education of persons with disabilities.

As the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree (Radcliffe College), Keller wrote several books, many speeches, and essays. The most popular are The Story of My Life (1903), The World I Live In (1908), and My Religion (1927, also known as Light in My Darkness).

During her extraordinary life, Keller helped and founded numerous foundations to improve the lives of the deaf and blind. She received many honors for her achievements, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and induction to the Women’s Hall of Fame in 1965.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart. - Helen Keller (The Story of My Life Quotes)
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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.Letter to Rev. Phillips Brooks (June 8, 1891), in Part II. Letters (1887-1901), The Story of My Life (1903)

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - Helen Keller (Let Us Have Faith Quotes)
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Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.Faith Fears Not, Let Us Have Faith (1940)

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 (We Bereaved Quotes)
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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.We Bereaved (1929)

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope. - Helen Keller (Optimism: An Essay Quotes)
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Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.Part III. The Practice of Optimism, Optimism: An Essay (1903)

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough. - Helen Keller (The Faith of Helen Keller Quotes)
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We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.Chapter VI. On People and Life, The Faith of Helen Keller (1967)

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant. - Helen Keller Quotes
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People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant.New Vision for the Blind, in Justice, Pitsburgh, Pennsylvania (October 25, 1913)

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships. - Helen Keller (The Simplest Way to Be Happy Quotes)
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A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.The Simplest Way to Be Happy, as published in Home Magazine (February, 1933)

Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. - Helen Keller (To the New College Girl Quotes)
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Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.To the New College Girl, in Youth's Companion (June 8, 1905)

As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision. - Helen Keller (My Religion Quotes)
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As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.Chapter VII, My Religion (1927)

The highest result of education is tolerance. - Helen Keller (Optimism: An Essay Quotes)
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The highest result of education is tolerance.Part II. Optimism Without, Optimism: An Essay (1903)

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others. - Helen Keller Quotes
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Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.News report (June 26, 1955)

True education combines intellect, beauty, goodness, and the greatest of these is goodness. - Helen Keller (To the New College Girl Quotes)
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True education combines intellect, beauty, goodness, and the greatest of these is goodness.To the New College Girl, in Youth's Companion (June 8, 1905)

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. - Helen Keller (The Story of My Life Quotes)
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One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.Part III. A Supplementary Account of Helen Keller's Life and Education, Chapter IV. Speech, The Story of My Life (1903)

World peace will never come until the passion of supremacy is combated. - Helen Keller Quotes
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World peace will never come until the passion of supremacy is combated.Central Hotel, Glasgow (December 23, 1936), in Helen Keller's Journal (1938)

Our worst foes are not belligerent circumstances, but wavering spirits. - Helen Keller (My Future As I See It Quotes)
15

Our worst foes are not belligerent circumstances, but wavering spirits.My Future As I See It, in The Ladies' Home Journal (November 1903)

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 (The Story of My Life Quotes)
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There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.Part I, Chapter I, The Story of My Life (1903)

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. - Helen Keller Quotes
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Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.On Feeling Thankful, Quote Page 4, Column 1, in Harrisburg Telegraph, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (November 23, 1927)

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face. - Helen Keller Quotes
18

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face. Letter to a five-year-old blind child, News report (May 31, 1955)

Optimism that does not count the cost is like a house builded on sand. - Helen Keller (Optimism: An Essay Quotes)
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Optimism that does not count the cost is like a house builded on sand.Part I. Optimism Within, Optimism: An Essay (1903)

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 (To the New College Girl Quotes)
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When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.To the New College Girl, in Youth's Companion (June 8, 1905)

God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His works! - Helen Keller (Let Us Have Faith Quotes)
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God Himself is not secure, having given man dominion over His works!Faith Fears Not, Let Us Have Faith (1940)

There are no such things as divine, immutable or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim to them. - Helen Keller (Why Men Need Woman Suffrage Quotes)
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There are no such things as divine, immutable or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim to them.Why Men Need Woman Suffrage, in New York Call, (October 17, 1915)

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 (My Religion Quotes)
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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.Chapter VI, My Religion (1927)

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The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed. - Helen Keller (The Modern Woman Quotes)
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The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.The Modern Woman, in Metropolitan Magazine (December 1912)

I do think of love sometimes, but it 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 (Midstream: My Later Life Quotes)
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I do think of love sometimes, but it is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.Chapter VIII. My Oldest Friend, Midstream: My Later Life (1929)

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. - Helen Keller (Optimism: An Essay Quotes)
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Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.Part I. Optimism Within, Optimism: An Essay (1903)

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. - Helen Keller (Let Us Have Faith Quotes)
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Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.Faith Fears Not, Let Us Have Faith (1940)

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world. - Helen Keller Quotes
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Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.News report (June 26, 1955)

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. - Helen Keller (Optimism: An Essay Quotes)
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The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.Part II. Optimism Without, Optimism: An Essay (1903)

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. - Helen Keller (The Hand of the World Quotes)
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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.The Hand of the World, in The American Magazin (December 1912)

The civilization of a state should be measured by the amount of suffering it prevents and the degree of happiness it makes possible for its citizens. - Helen Keller Quotes
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The civilization of a state should be measured by the amount of suffering it prevents and the degree of happiness it makes possible for its citizens.Speech to the legislature of Iowa on a bill to create a commission for the blind, Des Moines (1927)

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men. - Helen Keller Quotes
32

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one’s fellow men.Why I Became an IWW, interview by Barbara Bently, in New York Tribune (January 16, 1916)

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 (Peace at Eventide Quotes)
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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.Peace at Eventide (1932)

The power of effecting changes for the better is within ourselves, not in the favorableness of circumstances. - Helen Keller Quotes
34

The power of effecting changes for the better is within ourselves, not in the favorableness of circumstances.Rehabilitation (October 31, 1923)

As it is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing, so it requires incessant labour to win champions among the seeing for the sightless. - Helen Keller Quotes
35

As it is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing, so it requires incessant labour to win champions among the seeing for the sightless.The Manse, Bothwell, January 15, 1937, in Helen Keller's Journal (1938)

Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful, if the race was to survive. But now, to preserve the race, it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation. - Helen Keller Quotes
36

Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful, if the race was to survive. But now, to preserve the race, it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation.

The best preparedness is one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them. Nothing is to be gained by the workers from war. - Helen Keller Quotes
37

The best preparedness is one that disarms the hostility of other nations and makes friends of them. Nothing is to be gained by the workers from war.Menace of the Militarist Program, delivered before the Labor Forum in New York, New York (December 19, 1915)

College is only for mediocre people, not for geniuses. - Helen Keller (An Apology for Going to College Quotes)
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College is only for mediocre people, not for geniuses.An Apology for Going to College, in McClure's Magazine (June 1905)

The most beautiful world is always entered through the imagination. - Helen Keller (The World I Live In Quotes)
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The most beautiful world is always entered through the imagination.Chapter VIII. The Five-Sensed World, The World I Live In (1908)

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction. - Helen Keller (Strike Against War Quotes)
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Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.Strike Against War, delivered before the Women's Peace Party in New York, New York (January 5, 1916)

I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than walk alone in the light. - Helen Keller Quotes
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I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than walk alone in the light.Chapter: On the Vaudeville Circuit, Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy by Joseph P. Lash (1980)

Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows. - Helen Keller (The Beauty of Silence Quotes)
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Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows.The Beauty of Silence, in The Home Magazine (May 1935)

One's life-story cannot be told with complete veracity. A true autobiography would have to be written in states of mind, emotions, heartbeats, smiles, and tears, not in months and years, or physical events. Life is marked off on the soul-chart by feelings, not by dates. - Helen Keller (Midstream: My Later Life Quotes)
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One’s life-story cannot be told with complete veracity. A true autobiography would have to be written in states of mind, emotions, heartbeats, smiles, and tears, not in months and years, or physical events. Life is marked off on the soul-chart by feelings, not by dates.Chapter XI. In the Whirlpool, Midstream: My Later Life (1929)

Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much. - Helen Keller Quotes
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Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.Chapter: On the Vaudeville Circuit, Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy by Joseph P. Lash (1980)

It has been a happy life. My limitations never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times. But it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. Then, the wind passes, and the flowers are content. - Helen Keller Quotes
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It has been a happy life. My limitations never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times. But it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. Then, the wind passes, and the flowers are content.News report (June 26, 1955)

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Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.No source

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The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.No source

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What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.No source

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The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.No source