Margaret Mead Quotes
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Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.
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It has been a woman's task throughout history to go on believing in life when there was almost no hope. lf we are united, we may be able to produce a world in which our children and other people's children will be safe.
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The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.
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One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
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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.
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I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.
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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.
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Partly as a consequence of male authority prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.
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Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.
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Laughter is man's most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man.
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If we are to give our utmost effort and skill and enthusiasm, we must believe in ourselves, which means believing in our past and in our future, in our parents and in our children, in that particular blend of moral purpose and practical inventiveness which is the American character.
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No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back. You can get rid of it if you live in an enclave and keep everybody else out, and bring the children up to be unfit to live anywhere else. They can go on ignoring the family for several generations. But such communities are not part of the main world.
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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.
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I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.
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Standardized personality differences between the sexes are of this order, cultural creations to which each generation, male and female, is trained to conform.
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The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.
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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.
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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.
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Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.
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If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one's subject matter.