Mead Margaret Quotes & Sayings

The atmosphere is the key symbol of global interdependence. — Margaret Mead

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

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

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

The most intractable problem today is not pollution or technology or war; but the lack of belief that the future is very much in the hands of the individual. — Margaret Mead

Living in the modern world, clothed and muffled, forced to convey our sense of our bodies in terms of remote symbols like walking sticks and umbrellas and handbags, it is easy to lose sight of the immediacy of the human body plan. — Margaret Mead

Envy of the male role can come as much from an undervaluation of the role of wife and mother as from an overvaluation of the public aspects of achievement that have been reserved for men. — Margaret Mead

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

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back. — Margaret Mead

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

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

Interest and proficiency in almost any one activity-swimming, boating, fishing, skiing, skating-breed interest in many more. Once someone discovers the delight of mastering one skill, however slightly, he is likely to try out not just one more, but a whole ensemble. — Margaret Mead

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

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

EARTH DAY reminds the people of the world of the need for continuing care which is vital to Earth's safety. — Margaret Mead

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. — Margaret Mead

Whatever advantages may have arisen, in the past, out of the existence of a specially favored and highly privileged aristocracy, it is clear to me that today no argument can stand that supports unequal opportunity or any intrinsic disqualification for sharing in the whole of life. — Margaret Mead

Maleness in America is not absolutely defined; it has to be kept and re-earned every day, and one essential element in the definition is beating women in every game that both sexes play. — Margaret Mead

Creationism: the theory that Rome was built in a day. — Margaret Mead

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. — Margaret Mead

Laughter, that distinctively human emotion, laughter which springs from trust in the other, from willingness to put oneself momentarily in the other's place, even at one's own expense, is the special emotional basis of democratic procedures, just as pride is the emotion of an aristocracy, shame of a crowd that rules, and fear of a police state. — Margaret Mead

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

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

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

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

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. — Margaret Mead

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 gift will find a fitting place. — Margaret Mead

I had the good fortune to be able to take a course with Margaret Mead. I had a fabulous art course, where it was explained to me that nothing exists in a vacuum, that everything is a result of the period in which it's done - the economics, the sociology, the politics, all sewn together. That was a very important lesson. — Iris Apfel

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

Leisure and the cultivation of human capacities are inextricably interdependent. — Margaret Mead

Women have an important contribution to make. — Margaret Mead

Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-heartedattempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too. — Margaret Mead

I think the important thing about sisters is that they share the same minute, familiar life-style, the same little sets of rules. Therefore they can keep house with each other late in life, because they share the same bunch of housewifely prejudices. The important thing about women today is, as they get older, they still keep house. It's one reason they don't die, but men die when they retire. Women just polish the teacups. — Margaret Mead

There is no evidence that suggests women are naturally better at caring for children ... with the fact of child-bearing out of the centre of attention, there is even more reason for treating girls first as human beings, then as women. — Margaret Mead

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

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

Today our approaches to children are fragmented and partial. Those who care for well children know little of children who are sick. The deep knowledge that comes from the intensive attempt to cure is separated from the knowledge of those whose main task is to teach. — Margaret Mead

Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law. — Margaret Mead

Throughout history, females have picked providers for males. Males pick anything. — Margaret Mead

EARTH DAY uses one of humanity's great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon. — Margaret Mead

I never got any training in how to write novels as an English major at Oberlin, but I got some great training for writing novels from anthropology and from Margaret Mead. — Alan Furst

We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation. — Margaret Mead

The problem with America today is that too many people know too much about not enough. — Margaret Mead

Laughter is man's most distinctive emotional expression. — Margaret Mead

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

With the exception of the few cases to be discussed in the next chapter, adolescence represented no period of crisis or stress, but was instead an orderly developing of a set of slowly maturing interests and activities. — Margaret Mead

It was not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless this planet is - something that we must hold in our arms and care for. — Margaret Mead

In contrast to our own social environment which brings out different aspects of human nature and often demonstrated that behavior which occurs almost invariably in individuals within our society is nevertheless due not to original nature but to social environment; and a homogeneous and simple development of the individual may be studied. — Margaret Mead

I have tried to answer the question which sent me to Samoa: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture? — Margaret Mead

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 — Margaret Mead

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

If they learn easily, they are penalized for being bored when they have nothing to do; if they excel in some outstanding way, they are penalized as being conspicuously better than the peer group. The culture tries to make the child with a gift into a one-sided person, to penalize him at every turn, to cause him trouble in making friends and to create conditions conducive to the development of a neurosis. Neither teachers, the parents of other children, nor the child peers will tolerate a Wunderkind. — Margaret Mead

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. — Margaret Mead

No one will live all his life in the world into which he was born and no one will die in the world in which he worked in his maturity. — Margaret Mead

If I were to be taken hostage, I would not plead for release nor would I want my government to be blackmailed. I think certain government officials, industrialists and celebrated persons should make it clear they are prepared to be sacrificed if taken hostage. If that were done, what gain would there be for terrorists in taking hostages? — Margaret Mead

The semimetaphysical problems of the individual and society, of egoism and altruism, of freedom and determinism, either disappear or remain in the form of different phases in the organization of a consciousness that is fundamentally social. — Margaret Mead

Anthropology is separated from mass reading, and that is something that bothered Margaret Mead. She always said that she wrote everything for her grandmother, in a way that her grandmother could understand what she was saying. — Lily King

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

The differences between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature. — Margaret Mead

Human beings seem to hold on more tenaciously to a cultural identity that is learned through suffering than to one that has been acquired through pleasure and delight. — Margaret Mead

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

Female animals defending their young are notoriously ferocious and lack the playful delight in combat which characterizes the mock combats of males of the same species. There seems very little ground for claiming that the mother of young children is more peaceful, more responsible, and more thoughtful for the welfare of the human race than is her husband or brother. — Margaret Mead

Home, I learned, can be anywhere you make it. Home is also the place to which you come back again and again. — Margaret Mead

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

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

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. — Margaret Mead

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

The task of each family is also the task of all humanity. This is to cherish the living, remember those who have gone before, and prepare for those who are not yet born. — Margaret Mead

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

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

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

Parents feel like immigrants in the country of the young. — Margaret Mead

Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention. — Margaret Mead

I discovered when I had a child of my own that I had become a biased observer of small children. Instead of looking at them with affectionate but nonpartisan eyes, I saw each of them as older or younger, bigger or smaller, more or less graceful, intelligent, or skilled than my own child. — Margaret Mead

Up to a few years ago nearly all the literature about Oceania was written by papalagi and other outsiders. Our islands were and still are a goldmine for romantic novelists and filmmakers, bar-room journalists and semi-literate tourists, sociologists and Ph.D. students, remittance men and sailing evangelists, UNO experts, and colonial administrators and their well-groomed spouses. Much of this literature ranges from the hilariously romantic through the pseudo-scholarly to the infuriatingly racist; from the noble savage literary school through Margaret Mead and all her comings of age, Somerset Maugham's puritan missionaries/drunks/and saintly whores and James Michener's rascals and golden people, to the stereotyped childlike pagan who needs to be steered to the Light. — Albert Wendt

[Among the Arapeh ... both father and mother are held responsible for child care by the entire community ... ] If one comments upon a middle-aged man as good-looking, the people answer: 'Good-looking? Ye-e-e-s? But you should have seen him before he bore all those children'. — Margaret Mead

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

?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

The prophet who fails to present a bearable alternative and yet preaches doom is part of the trap that he postulates. — Margaret Mead

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

After all, we are all immigrants to the future; none of us is a native in that land. Margaret Mead famously wrote about the profound changes wrought by the Second World War, "All of us who grew up before the war are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before." Today we are again in the early stages of defining a new age. The very underpinnings of our society and institutions
from how we work to how we create value, govern, trade, learn, and innovate
are being profoundly reshaped by amplified individuals. We are indeed all migrating to a new land and should be looking at the new landscape emerging before us like immigrants: ready to learn a new language, a new way of doing things, anticipating new beginnings with a sense of excitement, if also with a bit of understandable trepidation. — Marina Gorbis

Learned behaviors have replaced the biologically given ones. — Margaret Mead

All of us who grew up before World War II are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before. — Margaret Mead

Standardized personality differences between the sexes are of this order, cultural creations to which each generation, male and female, is trained to conform. — Margaret Mead

Women should be permitted to volunteer for non-combat service, [ ... ] We have no real way of knowing whether the kinds of training that teach men both courage and restraint would be adaptable to women or effective in a crisis. But the evidence of history and comparative studies of other species suggest that women as a fighting body might be far less amenable to the rules that prevent war from becoming a massacre and, with the use of modern weapons, that protect the survival of all humanity. That is what I meant by saying that women in combat might be too fierce. — Margaret Mead

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. — Margaret Mead

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? — Margaret Mead

Those social behaviors which automatically preclude the building of a democratic world must go - every social limitation of human beings in terms of heredity, whether it be of race, or sex, or class. Every social institution which teaches human beings to cringe to those above and step on those below must be replaced by institutions which teach people to look each other straight in the face ... — Margaret Mead

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

An occupation that has no basis in sex-determined gifts can now recruit its ranks from twice as many potential artists. — Margaret Mead

Love is the invention of a few high cultures ... it is cultural artifact. To make love the requirement of a lifelong marriage is exceedingly difficult, and only a few people can achieve it. I don't believe in setting universal standards that a large proportion of people can't reach. — Margaret Mead

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

We must bear in mind the possibility that the greater opportunities open in the twentieth century to women may be quite withdrawn, and that we may return to stricter regimentation of women ... — Margaret Mead

When I stand on a street in a Canadian city and look across the street, it couldn't be anywhere but Canada, but how can I prove it? — Margaret Mead

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

We make our own criminals, and their crimes are congruent with the national culture we all share. It has been said that a people get the kind of political leadership they deserve. I think they also get the kinds of crime and criminals they themselves bring into being. — Margaret Mead

The suffering of either sex - of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult - this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change. — Margaret Mead

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

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

In every human society of which we have any record, there are those who teach and those who learn, for learning a way of life is implicit in all human culture as we know it. But the separation of the teacher's role from the role of all adults who inducted the young into the habitual behavior of the group, was a comparatively late invention. Furthermore, when we do find explicit and defined teaching, in primitive societies we find it tied in with a sense of the rareness or the precariousness of some human tradition. — Margaret Mead