“The highest result of education is tolerance.”
Helen Keller
Optimism (Primary source)
Optimism presents Keller’s philosophy that despite her deafness and blindness, true happiness comes from inner faith rather than material circumstances. She argues optimism enables achievement and is essential for human progress and personal fulfillment.
“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. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.”
Helen Keller
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. It be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, them it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“As I look back on the flight I think two questions have been asked me most frequently. First: Was I afraid? Secondly: What did I wear?”
— Amelia Earhart Primary source“When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Every scientific law, every scientific principle, every statement of the results of an observation is some kind of a summary which leaves out details.”
— Richard Feynman Primary source