In 1987, Congress passed a resolution designating the month of March as “Women’s History Month,” a tradition that each president since Ronald Reagan has honored.
”Throughout history, extraordinary women have fought tirelessly to broaden our democracy’s reach and help perfect our Union,” President Barack Obama said in his “Presidential Proclamation” on Feb. 27 declaring March 2015 once again as Women’s History Month.
”Through protest and activism,” Obama continued, “generations of women have appealed to the values at the heart of our nation and fought to give meaning to the idea that we are all created equal.”
But well before 1987, March served as an important month for one of the most captivating figures in American women’s history.
On March 3, 1887, Helen Keller was first introduced to her teacher and life mentor Anne Sullivan. With the help of Sullivan, Keller, who was both blind and deaf as the result of a childhood illness, went on to become the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college. Her experiences in learning to communicate as a deaf-blind individual was immortalized in William Gibson’s 1957 play, “The Miracle Worker.”
But while many Americans are well versed in Keller’s early years, as dramatized by Gibson, Keller is also notable for her intellectual pursuits — she authored over a dozen books — and her political and social activism as a suffragist, advocate for the poor and a vocal pacifist.
“Helen Keller is the eighth wonder of the world,” Mark Twain declared after meeting her. “She was born with a fine mind and a bright wit, and by help of Miss Sullivan’s amazing gifts as a teacher this mental endowment has been developed until the result is what we see to-day … a wonderful creature who sees without eyes, hears without ears, and speaks with dumb lips. She stands alone in history.”
Amidst her activism, Keller’s belief that persistent education can change hearts, minds and the world may be her most lasting legacy.
To celebrate such a towering figure in the history of American women, we’ve compiled a list of 20 quotes that show Keller’s love and reverence for the pursuit of knowledge.
The will to soar
”One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
Address to the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
No wasted effort
”No effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek.”
Address to the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Imagination
”The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.”
The Five-sensed World
The worst evil
”Self-culture has been loudly and boastfully proclaimed as sufficient for all our ideals of perfection. But if we listen to the best men and women everywhere … they will say that 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.”
From My Religion / Light in My Darkness
Danger
”Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
From Let Us Have Faith
Security
”Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
From The Open Door
Success
”No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
From Helen Keller’s Journal: 1936-1937
Tyranny
”Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas.”
Said in response to Nazi censorship.
The most important day
”The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.”
From The Story of My Life
Things eternal
”The Bible gives me a deep, comforting sense that “things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.”
From The Story of My Life
Shakespeare
”I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.”
From The Story of My Life
Utopia
”Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends.”
From The Story of My Life
Greek
”If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.”
From The Story of My Life
Toleration
”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.”
From The Story of My Life
Dangerous optimism
”It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.”
From Optimism
Suffering
”Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
From Optimism
Philosophy
”To know the history of philosophy is to know that the highest thinkers of the ages, the seers of the tribes and the nations, have been optimists. The growth of philosophy is the story of man’s spiritual life.”
From Optimism
Tolerance
”The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience.”
From Optimism
Happiness
”Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.”
From The Simplest Way to be Happy
The mastery of hardships
”A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”
From The Simplest Way to be Happy