Margaret Mead famous quotes

I learned the value of hard work by working hard.
-- Margaret Mead

#Uplifting #Work #Values

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

#Hate #Love Is #Demand

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

#Grandchildren #Order #Grandparent

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Women #Diversity #Tolerance

For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.
-- Margaret Mead

#Conversation #Evolve #Humans

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

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Laughter

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

#Life #Relationship #Family

Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.
-- Margaret Mead

#Time #Women #Bad Ass

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world.
-- Margaret Mead

#Thoughtful #People #Groups

We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.
-- Margaret Mead

#Earth

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Family #Pain #Mind

Somehow, we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, acquire knowledge of the past, and provide a sense of the future.
-- Margaret Mead

#Children #Past #People

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Family #Being Thankful #Support

We are at a point in history where a proper attention to space, and especially near space, may be absolutely crucial in bringing the world together.
-- Margaret Mead

#Space #Together #Attention

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

#Children #Insight #Our Children

One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it.
-- Margaret Mead

#Children #Animal #Welfare

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

#Passion #Government #Problem

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

#Food #Health #Men

The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown... The children, the young, must ask the questions that we would never think to ask, but enough trust must be re-established so that the elders will be permitted to work with them on the answers.
-- Margaret Mead

#Funny #Trust #Children

I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?
-- Margaret Mead

#Religious #Animal #Hands

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
-- Margaret Mead

#Education #Teacher #Children

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Freedom #Passion #Government

I did not write it [Coming of Age in Samoa] as a popular book, but only with the hope that it would be intelligible to those who might make the best use of its theme, that adolescence need not be the time of stress and strain which Western society made it; that growing up could be freer and easier and less complicated; and also that there were prices to pay for the very lack of complication I found in Samoa - less intensity, less individuality, less involvement with life.
-- Margaret Mead

#Growing Up #Stress #Book

In each age there is a series of pressing questions which must be asked and answered. On the correctness of the questions depends the survival of those who ask; on the quality of the answers depends the quality of the life those survivors will lead.
-- Margaret Mead

#Survival #Age #Quality

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

#Sex #Moving #Sleep

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

#Humanity #Together #Woven

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Fear #Fog #Punishment

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

#Motivational #Success #Congratulations

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Children #Women #School

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

#Life #Commitment #People

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

#Nature #Carpe Diem #Society

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Love #Dance #Song

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

#Wise #Wisdom #Growing Up

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

#Respect #People #Way

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Birthday #Regret #Learning

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

#Inspirational #Life #Friendship

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

#Inspirational #Change #Kindness

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.
-- Margaret Mead

#Boyfriend #Fathers Day #Funny Dad

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

#Funny #Hilarious #Peace

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

#Honesty #Acceptance #Evil

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

#Children #Growing Up #Today

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

#Baby #Soulmate #Struggle

There are unidentified flying objects. That is, there are a hard core of cases-perhaps 20 to 30 percent in different studies-for which there is no explanation. We can only imagine what purpose lies behind the activities of these quiet, harmlessly cruising objects that time and again approach the Earth. The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is that they are simply watching what we are up to
-- Margaret Mead

#Lying #Earth #Different

What the world needs is not romantic lovers who are sufficient unto themselves, but husbands and wives who live in communities, relate to other people, carry on useful work and willingly give time and attention to their children.
-- Margaret Mead

#Children #Husband #Romantic Love

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

#Women #Sisterhood #Mediocrity

‎ When a person is born we rejoice, and when they're married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.
-- Margaret Mead

#Grief #Trying #Married

Even though the ship may go down, the journey goes on.
-- Margaret Mead

#Failure #Journey #Goes On

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Sex #Children #Acceptance

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

#Learning #School #Grandmother

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Sex #Personality #May

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Children #Future #Mean

...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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Beautiful #Respect #Animal

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

#Groups #World #Underestimate

Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.
-- Margaret Mead

#Running #Views #Firsts

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Country #Cities #Voice

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

#Children #Teaching #Sisterhood

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.
-- Margaret Mead

#Science #Air #Listening

Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
-- Margaret Mead

#Integrity #Ocean #Communication

Human beings do not carry civilization in their genes. All that we do carry in our genes are certain capacities- the capacity to learn to walk upright, to use our brains, to speak, to relate to our fellow men, to construct and use tools, to explore the universe, and to express that exploration in religion, in art, in science, in philosophy.
-- Margaret Mead

#Art #Philosophy #Men

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.
-- Margaret Mead

#Peace #Two #Bathroom

The way in which each human infant is transformed into the finished adult, into the complicated individual version of his city and his century is one of the most fascinating studies open to the curious minded.
-- Margaret Mead

#Cities #Childhood #Adults

Between friends there is no bribery. ... the relationship of friends is intrinsically fair and equal. Neither feels stronger or more clever or more beautiful than the other.
-- Margaret Mead

#Friends #Beautiful #Clever

there are now no elders who know more than the young themselves about what the young are experiencing.
-- Margaret Mead

#Generations #Young #Elders

In our contemporary world, no one can think or work with a single picture of what a family is. No one can fit all human behavior, all thought and feeling, into a single pattern.
-- Margaret Mead

#Family #Thinking #Feelings

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

#Children #Responsibility #People

Cynicism is the other thing that goes with sentimentality ...
-- Margaret Mead

#Cynicism #Sentimentality

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

#Doubt #Brain #Reason

Our human situation no longer permits us to make armed dichotomies between those who are good and those who are evil, those who are right and those who are wrong. The first blow dealt to the enemy's children will sign the death warrant of our own.
-- Margaret Mead

#Children #Blow #Evil

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

#Grandparent #Humans