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Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.
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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.
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The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the attitude of seeing people towards them.
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The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.
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Every child has a right to be well-born, well-nurtured and well-taught, and only the freedom of woman can guarantee him this right.
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The woman who works for a dollar a day has as much right as any other human being to say what the conditions of her work should be.
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Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
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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.
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Each day comes to me with both hands full of possibilities.
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Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
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I am not a perfect being. . . . I have more faults than I know what to do with. I have a naughty temper. I am stubborn, impatient of hindrances and of stupidity. I have not in the truest sense a Christian spirit. I am naturally a fighter. I am lazy. I put off till tomorrow what I might better do today. I do not feel that I have been compensated for the two senses I lack. I have worked hard for all the senses I have got, and always I beg for more.
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While the right friends are near us, we feel that all is well. Our everyday life blossoms suddenly into bright possibilities.
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The idea of brotherhood re-dawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed.
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To get Congress to do anything.
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Serious harm, I am afraid, has been wrought to our generation by fostering the idea that they would live secure in a permanent order of things.
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I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily.
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We have prayed, we have coaxed, we have begged, for the vote, with the hope that men, out of chivalry, would bestow equal rights upon women and take them into partnership in the affairs of the state. We hoped that their common sense would triumph over prejudices and stupidity. We thought their boasted sense of justice would overcome the errors that so often fetter the human spirit; but we have always gone away empty handed. We shall beg no more.
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The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
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Look the world straight in the eye.
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Is love the sweetness of flowers?
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The mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that 'W-A-T-E-R' meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, joy, set it free.
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We cannot freely and wisely choose the right way for ourselves unless we know both good and evil.
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Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds 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.
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Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister's hand.