Helen Keller — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-07-17

She couldn't see or hear from nineteen months old, yet became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a college degree — then spent six decades writing, lecturing, and organizing for labor rights, suffrage, and socialism.

Biography

About

Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, Helen Adams Keller lost both sight and hearing after an illness before she turned two. She communicated through home signs until age seven, when Anne Sullivan arrived as her teacher and lifelong companion, unlocking language through touch. Keller studied at specialist and mainstream schools, then entered Radcliffe College and graduated in 1903 — the first deafblind American to hold a college diploma. That same year she published The Story of My Life, the autobiography that made her education famous. She went on to write fourteen books and hund…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Helen Keller

Helen Keller

said3 Nov 1912

Some years ago I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle ...

— "How I Became a Socialist", New York Call (3 November 1912)

Helen Keller

said3 Mar 1911

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats.

— Letter published in the Manchester Advertiser (3 March 1911), quoted in A People's History of the United States (1980) page 345

Helen Keller

said1910

The bulk of the world's knowledge is an imaginary construction.

— The World I live in (1910) chapter 8, The Five-sensed World Quoted in:

Helen Keller

said1910

We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.

— The Five-sensed World (1910)

Helen Keller

said1910