Helen Keller Quotes

[On being deaf:] How much less pain there is in calmly estimating the enjoyments from which we must separate ourselves, of bravely saying, for once and for ever, 'Let them go,' than in feeling them waste and dwindle, till their very shadows escape from our grasp!

Deafness produces bizarre effects, reversing the natural order of things; the interchange of letters is the conversation of the deaf, and the only link with society. I would be in despair, for instance, over seeing you speak, but, instead, I am only too happy to hear you write.

But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't. And I'm not talking about imagining what a deaf person's whole life is like I even mean just realizing what it is like for an instant.

I learned to speak first, and then to sign. I have never really known what it was like to hear, so I can't compare hearing aids to normal hearing.

I was very shy. I didn't really hang around with hearing people very much. Mostly I had deaf friends.

I always say deafness is a silent disability: you can't see, and it's not life-threatening, so it has to touch your life in some way in order for it to be on your radar.

I was born deaf. Sound never existed in my life, and this is completely normal to me.

I didn't wake up one day and just couldn't hear. I woke up one day and realized I was having difficulty, and that I had overcompensated by lip reading, so that I didn't really understand how bad it was.

There is research proving that deaf people have increased visual abilities.

The difference between deafness and any other disability is that there is no way to put yourself in a position of knowing what it would be like because you can't stop yourself from hearing your own breath or your own heartbeat. You can not remove sound entirely from your life. You can get a sense of what being blind is like by closing and covering your eyes which provides a source of empathy because we can all project ourselves to that. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't.

Calls her beautiful, but she cannot hear.

You can knock on a deaf man's door forever.

Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp.

How many deaf people do you know in real life? Unless they live in a cave, or are 14, which seems to be true for most people in this business, what could I possibly tell them that they don't already know?

Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand.

I live my life like everyone else; everyone has their own obstacles. Mine is deafness.

I'm hard of hearing. I miss a lot. It's really tough.

Hear the birds? Sometimes I like to pretend that I'm deaf and I try to imagine what it's like not to be able to hear them. It's not that bad.

I have serious hearing loss. I'm challenged if I don't have my hearing aids in.

The deaf community and the hearing community, there's not always a ton of interaction.

I'm the only one in my family who is deaf, and there are still conversations that go around me that I miss out on. And I ask what's going on, and I have to ask to be included. But I'm not going to be sad about it. I don't live in sad isolation. It's just a situation I'm used to.

When I was 11, I knew that I wanted to write a kid's book and tell the world what it was like being deaf.

I have to constantly remind myself that I am communicating with a person with hearing loss.

I became deaf when I was 18 months old. And I learned to sign when I was 5 years old.

Although I'm deaf in only my left ear, when there is noise all around, I'm unable to distinguish sounds and can't hear anything.