Margaret Mead Quotes

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everybody else.

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

One of the oldest human needs is having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

I've been married three times -- and each time I married the right person.

Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.

Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump; you have to get it right the first time.

Never doubt a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read, it merely records the degree of the lover's insecurity.

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.

It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world.

Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.

We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.

The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.

For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.

We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.

Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Women want medicore men. and men are working hard to become as medicore as possible.

Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world.

For, indeed, that's all who ever have.

Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.

Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.

The pains of childbirth were altogether different from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain. These were pains one could follow with one's mind.

Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, Go to sleep by yourselves. And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.

Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone.

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

Many women, particularly young women, have claimed the right to use the most explicit sex terms, including extremely vulgar ones, in public as well as private. But it is men, far more than women, who have been liberated by this change. For now that women use these terms, men no longer need to watch their own language in the presence of women. But is this a gain for women?

Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.

Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.

I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.

Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.

The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.

Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.

The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations.

Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very old human need.

Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.

It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.

People in America, of course, live in all sorts of fashions, because they are foreigners, or unlucky, or depraved, or without ambition; people live like that, but Americans live in white detached houses with green shutters. Rigidly, blindly, the dream takes precedence.