(June 27, 1880–June 1, 1968), was an American author and lecturer. She overcame the tremendous obstacles of being both blind and deaf, due to a debilitating illness suffered at the age of two. Her parents took her to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who recommended her to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. It was there, at the age of seven, that Anne Sullivan began tutoring her through the sense of touch, eventually teaching her to read Braille.
Helen Keller attended Radcliffe College, where Anne Sullivan interpreted the lectures to her, and she was able to type on a special Braille typewriter. Helen Keller became concerned about the conditions of blind, especially those blinded in World War II. The recipient of innumerable national and international honors for her efforts to help the blind, Helen Keller wrote several books, including: The Story of My Life, 1903; Optimism, 1903; The World I Live In, 1908; The Song of the Stone Wall, 1910; Out of the Dark, 1913; My Religion, 1927; Midstream, 1930; Let Us Have Faith, 1941; and The Open Door, 1957.
Helen Keller declared:
Just as all things upon earth represent and image forth all the realities of another world, so the Bible is one mighty representative of the whole spiritual life of humanity.3304
I thank God for my handicaps, for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.3305
Four things to learn in life:
To think clearly without hurry or confusion;
To love everybody sincerely;
To act in everything with the highest motives;
To trust God unhesitatingly.3306
In the film documentary of her life, The Unconquered, Helen Keller responded to the question, “Can you see the world?”:
I can see, and that is why I can be so happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a man-made world.3307
On February 5, 1955, at the age of seventy-four, Helen Keller typed a message on a conventional typewriter during an interview with newsmen just prior to her forty thousand mile world-wide journey, much of which was by airplane:
It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.3308
On June 26, 1955, just a few days before her seventy-fifth birthday, Helen Keller stated:
Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in the world.3309
On June 26, 1955, regarding reading the Bible, Helen Keller stated:
It gives me a deep comforting sense that “things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.”3310