Margaret Mead quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Margaret Mead on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

There are now no elders who know more than the young themselves about what the young are experiencing.

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

From a hundred cultures, [there is] one culture which does what no culture has ever done before-gives a place to every human gift.

I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman.

No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.

The closest friends I made all through life have been people who also grew up close to a loved and loving grandmother or grandfather.

For art to be reality, the whole sensuous being must be caught up in the experience.

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

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

To demand that another love what one loves is tyranny enough, but to demand that another hate what one hates, is even worse.

If sports are the toy department of life, then the NFL is the FAO Schwartz of sports.

And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born it compels humility: what we began is now its own.

I devoutly believe that there is no difficulty between two people for which both are not responsible.

Through a grandmother's voice and hands the end of life is known at the beginning.

Mothers are a biological necessity; fathers are a social invention

Pigs and cows and chickens and people are all competing for grain.

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

Because our civilization is woven of so many diverse strands, the ideas which any one group accepts will be found to contain numerous contradictions.

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.

Sometimes, instead of helping people to advance, a discovery or an invention holds them back.

War is only an invention, not a biological necessity.

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

I measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her fellow human beings.

I think rigid heterosexuality is a perversion of nature.

If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.

The anonymity of the city is one of its strengths as well as - carried too far - one of its weaknesses.

Where we choose to put our attention changes our brain, which in time can change how we see and interact with the world.

The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society.

I learned the value of hard work by working hard.

What is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love.

Cynicism is the other thing that goes with sentimentality ...

The need to find meaning ... is as real as the need for trust and for love, for relations with other human beings.

The atmosphere is the key symbol of global interdependence.

Learned behaviors have replaced the biologically given ones.

For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.

Today's children are the first generation to grow up in a world that has the power to destroy itself.

[Partly as a consequence of male authority] prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.

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

We grow up never questioning that which is unquestioned around us.

It used to be when we said, 'til death do us part,' death parted us pretty soon. That's why marriages used to last forever. Everybody was dead.

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

There is no lonelier person than the one who lives with a spouse with whom he or she cannot communicate.

My grandmother wanted me to get a good education, so she kept me as far away from schools as possible.

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.

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

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

You just have to learn not to care about the dusty mites under the beds.

I don't consider my marriages as failures! It's idiotic to assume that because a marriage ends, it's failed.

There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing ... when we save our children, we save ourselves

We women are doing pretty well. We're almost back to where we were in the twenties. (1976

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

Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them.

My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.

An education not founded on Art will never succeed.

WE MUST DEVISE A SYSTEM IN WHICH PEACE IS MORE REWARDING THAN WAR.

Women have an important contribution to make.

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For indeed that's all who ever have.

To the extent a person makes, invents or thinks something that is new to him, he may be said to have performed a creative act.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.

It has been a woman's task throughout history to go on believing in life when there was almost no hope.

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

There is no reason to think a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens cannot change the world; Indeed, that's the only thing that ever has.

Injustice experienced in the flesh, in deeply wounded flesh, is the stuff out of which change explodes.

The people of one nation alone cannot save their own children; each holds the responsibility for the others' children.

Dancing is the only activity in which almost all ages and both sexes participate.

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

There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.

Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly ...

And as I had my father's kind of mind-which was also his mother's-I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

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

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

The ability to learn is older as it is also more widespread than is the ability to teach.

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

Monogamous heterosexual love is probably one of the most difficult, complex and demanding of human relationships.

An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift

We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.

I suddenly realized that through no act of my own I had become biologically related to a new human being.

Never underestimate that a small group of people can hold up a liquor license. Sometimes, it's the only thing that can.

Loving you is just like breathing, as effortless, and as lovely.

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

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

In all cultures, human beings - in order to be human - must understand the nonhuman.

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

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

Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.

Leisure and the cultivation of human capacities are inextricably interdependent.

Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.

I'm unique just like everyone else

It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet.

Contentment can be bought at a price that one can not possibly pay.

The mind is not sex-typed.

You are totally unique. Just like everyone else.

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

Keeping even the most humble talent wrapped in a napkin becomes the more reprehensible the greater the emergency.

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

It is typical, in America, that a person's hometown is not the place where he is living now but is the place he left behind.