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.

Meaning of the quote

Toleration is the ability to accept differences and ideas that we may not agree with. It takes the same amount of focus and effort to be tolerant as it does to balance yourself on a bicycle. Just like keeping your balance on a bike, tolerating others requires constant mental effort and practice.

About Helen Keller

Helen Keller was a remarkable American author, disability rights advocate, and political activist who overcame the challenges of being deaf and blind to become the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was a prolific writer, campaigning for various causes and co-founding the American Civil Liberties Union.

More about the author

More quotes from Helen Keller

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

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.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

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.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

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.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Knowledge is love and light and vision.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

The highest result of education is tolerance.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Helen Keller

American author and activist (1880-1968)