Margaret Mead's Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

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.

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

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

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 everyone else.

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

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

I learned the value of hard work by working hard.

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.