Margaret Mead Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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.

I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.

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

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.

Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem.

All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.

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

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

Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world.

No country that permits firearms to be widely and randomly distributed among its population - especially firearms that are capable of wounding and killing human beings - can expect to escape violence, and a great deal of violence.

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

We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.

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

There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.

Samoa culture demonstrates how much the tragic or the easy solution of the Oedipus situation depends upon the inter-relationship between parents and children, and is not created out of whole cloth by the young child's biological impulses.

We may say that many, if not all, of the personality traits which we have called masculine or feminine are as lightly linked to sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of headdress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex.

...recognize and respect Earth's beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind, water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this precious balance.

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

[In Bali] life is a rhythmic, patterned unreality of pleasant, significant movement, centered in one's own body to which all emotions long ago withdrew.

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 woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.

A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.

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.

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

Everybody's suffering is mine but not everybody's murdering .

.. I do not distinguish for one moment whether my child is in danger or a child in central Asia. But I will not accept responsibility for what other people do because I happen to belong to that nation or that race or that religion. I do not believe in guilt by association.

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

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.

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

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

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

The time has come, I think, when we must recognize bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior... we shall not really succeed in discarding the straitjacket of our cultural beliefs about sexual choice if we fail to come to terms with the well-documented, normal human capacity to love members of both sexes.

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.

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

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.

Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world.

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

Don't depend on governments or corporations to fix problems.

Social revolutions are led by passionate individuals and that's what makes the difference.

The assumption that men were created equal, with an equal ability to make an effort and win an earthly reward, although denied every day by experience, is maintained every day by our folklore and our daydreams.

What we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel.

What we seldom "take" is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us.

A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.

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

In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world

We must recognize that beneath the superficial classifications of sex and race the same potentialities exist, recurring generation after generation, only to perish because society has no place for them.

we came to realize that a civilization which rode roughshod over the way of life of other peoples was incorporating evil in its own way of life.

There is no more creative force in the world than the menopausal woman with zest.

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