300 Famous Margaret Mead Quotes To Inspire You (2023)

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

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

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

4. Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

5. “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

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

7. “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?”

8. “No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence, in the end, is rewarded.” ~ Margaret Mead

9. “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

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

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

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

13. “There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.”

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

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

16. “We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.”

17. “Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.” Margaret Mead

18. “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

19. “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

20. “Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.” ~ Margaret Mead

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

22. “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

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

24. If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.

25. “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

26. “If we make one criterion for defining the artist the impulse to make something new, or to do something in a new way - a kind of divine discontent with all that has gone before, however good - then we can find such artists at every level of human culture, even when performing acts of great simplicity.”

27. “Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.” – Margaret Mead

28. 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.

29. Mothers are a biological necessity; fathers are a social invention.

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

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

32. “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

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

34. “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

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

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

37. “Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.” – Margaret Mead

38. Even though the ship may go down, the journey goes on.

39. “What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.” ~ Margaret Mead

40. “We are living beyond our means. As a people, we have developed a lifestyle 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

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

42. “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

43. “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.” – Margaret Mead

44. “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.”

45. “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

46. “Dubai is a safe place, and I never came across anything to worry about.”

47. “The mind is a neural computer.”

48. “Ninety-nine percent of the time humans have lived on this planet we’ve lived in tribes, groups of 12 to 36 people. Only during times of war, or what we have now, which is the psychological equivalent of war, does the nuclear family prevail, because it’s the most mobile unit that can ensure the survival of the species. But for the full flowering of the human spirit, we need groups, tribes.” ~ Margaret Mead

49. “An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift”

50. “No society has ever yet been able to handle the temptations of technology to mastery, to waste, to exuberance, to exploration and exploitation. We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish it as something that's fragile, that's only one, it's all we have. We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.”

51. “You know you love someone when you cannot put into words how they make you feel.”

52. 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.

53. “We must turn all of our educational efforts to training our children for the choices which will confront them… The child who is to choose wisely must be healthy in mind and body. The children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” Margaret Mead

54. “They need to find meaning…is as real as the need for trust and for love, for relations with other human beings.” ~ Margaret Mead

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

56. Any woman can find a husband unless she is deaf, dumb or blind ... [S]he cannot always marry the ideal man of her choice.

57. Old age is like flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.

58. “One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.” ~ Margaret Mead

59. “Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world.” ~ Margaret Mead

60. “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

61. “There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.” ~ Margaret Mead

62. “It is easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet.” – Margaret Mead

63. “L'éducation est un processus culturel (...) par lequel chaque nouvel individu est transformé en membre à part entière d'une société humaine particulière, partageant avec les autres membres une culture particulière.”

64. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

65. “If you wish to know who is really the lover, look then not at the boy who sits by her side, looks boldly into her eyes and twists the flowers in her necklace around his fingers and steals the hibiscus flower from her hair that he may wear it behind his ear. Do not think it is he who whispers softly in her ear, or says to her 'Sweetheart, wait for me to-night. After the moon has set, I will come to you,' or who teases her by saying she has many lovers. Look instead at the boy who sits far-off, who sits with bent head and takes no part in the joking.

66. “One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal an get away with it.”

67. “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” Margaret Mead

68. “Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.” ~ Margaret Mead

69. “I learned the value of hard work by working hard.”

70. “We must recognize that beneath the superficial classifications of sex and race the same potentialities exist, recurring generation after generation, only to perish because society has no place for them.” ~ Margaret Mead

71. “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

72. “I was wise enough never to grow up,

73. “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

74. “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”

75. “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

76. “You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don’t like.” ~ Margaret Mead

77. “The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.” – Margaret Mead

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

79. “One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.” – Margaret Mead

80. “Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship. ~Margaret Mead”

81. “A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.” Margaret Mead

82. “Man’s most human characteristic is not his ability to

83. “Through a grandmother’s voice and hands, the end of life is known at the beginning.” ~ Margaret Mead

84. “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

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

86. “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.”

87. 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.

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

89. “Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.”

90. “Never underestimate the power of a small, dedicated group of people to change the world; indeed, that is the only thing that ever has.”

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

92. “One of the oldest human needs is having someone wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.”

93. “If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.” – Margaret Mead

94. We have got to face the fact that marriage is a terminable institution.

95. “If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.” Margaret Mead

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

97. “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

98. “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

99. “You are totally unique. Just like everyone else.”

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

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

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

103. “I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.” ~ Margaret Mead

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

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

106. “The notion that we are products of our environment is our greatest sin; we are products of our choices."

107. “Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.” ~ Margaret Mead

108. “Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man. ”

109. “Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression.” Margaret Mead

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

111. “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

112. “For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.” ~ Margaret Mead

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

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

115. I have always done a woman's job.

116. “Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.” ~ Margaret Mead

117. “I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw”

118. “For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.” Margaret Mead

119. “Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression.”

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

121. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” ~ Margaret Mead

122. “Be who you really are, do what you want to do, in order to have what you really want.”

123. “No society has ever yet been able to handle the temptations of technology to mastery, to waste, to exuberance, to exploration and exploitation. We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish it as something that’s fragile, that’s only one, it’s all we have. We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.” Margaret Mead

124. “We talk about our high standard of living in this country. What we have is a high standard of work. Usually the peaks of civilization have been periods when a large proportion of the population had time to live. I don’t think we’re doing this today. I think the people who could live are still spending their time and supplementary resources on making a living.” – Margaret Mead

125. “It is easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet.”

126. “I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.”

127. To cherish the life of the world. Source: Epitaph on her gravestone

128. “Too many people, when they reject God, go on believing in the devil. Many intellectuals have a sense of evil without a confidence in good.”

129. The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short-cut answer.

130. “For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.”

131. “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

132. “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” ~ Margaret Mead

133. “Of course we need children! Adults need children in their lives to listen to and care for, to keep their imagination fresh and their hearts young and to make the future a reality for which they are willing to work.” ~ Margaret Mead

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

135. “CHILDREN MUST BE TAUGHT HOW TO THINK, NOT WHAT TO THINK”

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

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

138. Take action and believe in yourself. Dreams do come true.

139. Man's most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him.

140. “The ability to learn is older as it is also more widespread than is the ability to teach.” Margaret Mead

141. “Even very recently, the elders could say: ‘You know, I have been young and you never have been old.’ But today’s young people can reply: ‘You never have been young in the world I am young in, and you never can be.’ The older generation will never see repeated in the lives of young people their own unprecedented experience of sequentially emerging change. This break between generations is wholly new: it is planetary and universal.” Margaret Mead

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

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

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

145. Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.

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

147. Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.

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

149. “Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.”

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

151. “If you wish to know who is really the lover, look then not at the boy who sits by her side, looks boldly into her eyes and twists the flowers in her necklace around his fingers and steals the hibiscus flower from her hair that he may wear it behind his ear. Do not think it is he who whispers softly in her ear, or says to her 'Sweetheart, wait for me to-night. After the moon has set, I will come to you,' or who teases her by saying she has many lovers. Look instead at the boy who sits far-off, who sits with bent head and takes no part in the joking.

152. “The atmosphere is the key symbol of global interdependence.”

153. “as the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep,so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily , to appreciate more lovingly , our own.”

154. “One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and not be held responsible.

155. 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.

156. “I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.” Margaret Mead

157. “We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.” Margaret Mead

158. “Even very recently, the elders could say: ‘You know, I have been young and you never have been old.’ But today’s young people can reply: ‘You never have been young in the world I am young in, and you never can be.’ … the older generation will never see repeated in the lives of young people their own unprecedented experience of sequentially emerging change. This break between generations is wholly new: it is planetary and universal.” ~ Margaret Mead

159. “It’s easier for a woman to go into a strange village than a man. If a strange man wanders in, the natives are afraid he’ll take their wives away, but a woman can work with the mothers and children.” – Margaret Mead

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

161. “There are now no elders who know more than the young themselves about what the young are experiencing.” ~ Margaret Mead

162. “We — mankind — stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device — our consciousness of the crisis — as our unique contribution.” ~ Margaret Mead

163. “Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.” ~ Margaret Mead

164. “We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.” Margaret Mead

165. No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

166. “Having someone wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night is a very old human need.” Margaret Mead

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

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

169. “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

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

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

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

173. “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.”

174. Because of their age-long training in human relations—for that is what feminine intuition really is—women have a special contribution to make to any group enterprise.

175. “Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.”

176. Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.

177. “Even though the ship may go down, the journey goes on.”

178. “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

179. “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.”

180. “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 humor, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man” ~ Margaret Mead

181. “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. ”

182. “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

183. “Laughter is man's most distinctive emotional expression.”

184. “Be who you really are, do what you want to do, in order to have what you really want.” ~ Margaret Mead

185. 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.

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

187. “An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift.” – Margaret Mead

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

189. “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

190. “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. ”

191. “You know my fury about people is based precisely on the fact that I consider them to be responsible, moral creatures who so often do not act that way.” Margaret Mead

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

193. “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.”

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

195. 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.

196. “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

197. “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

198. “An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift” ~ Margaret Mead

199. “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.”

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

201. “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

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

203. 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.

204. “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

205. “You know you love someone when you cannot put into words how they make you feel.” ~ Margaret Mead

206. “I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.” – Margaret Mead

207. Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in. the most unexpected ways. Source: Franz Boaz, Mead's academic advisor, wrote. this of her. book Coming of Age in Samoa

208. 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.

209. “If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.” ~ Margaret Mead

210. “The notion that we are products of our environment is our greatest sin; we are products of our choices.” Margaret Mead

211. 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.

212. “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

213. “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

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

215. “We must turn all of our educational efforts to training our children for the choices which will confront them... The child who is to choose wisely must be healthy in mind and body. The children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

216. We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of their country.

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

218. “We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.” – Margaret Mead

219. “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

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

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

222. “I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.”

223. “I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.”

224. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.

225. “A great deal of what I say just leaves me open, I suppose, to a vast amount of misunderstanding. A great deal of what I say is based on an assumption which I hold and don’t always state. You know my fury about people is based precisely on the fact that I consider them to be responsible, moral creatures who so often do not act that way. But I am not surprised when they do. I am not that wretched a pessimist, and I wouldn’t sound the way I sound if I did not expect what I expect from human beings, if I didn’t have some ultimate faith and love, faith in them and love for them. You see, I am a human being too, and I have no right to stand in judgment of the world as though I am not a part of it. What I am demanding of other people is what I am demanding of myself.'

226. “Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.” – Margaret Mead

227. “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

228. “The assumption that men and woman are essentially alike in all respects, or even in the most important ones, is a damaging one, as damaging as the assumption that they are different in ways in which they aren’t different, perhaps more so.” ~ Margaret Mead

229. “If you’re afraid to fail then you’re probably going to fail.”Kobe Bryant

230. “We grow up never questioning that which is unquestioned around us.” ~ Margaret Mead

231. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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

233. “There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.” ~ Margaret Mead

234. “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.”

235. “Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

236. As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

237. “Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups or between groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to be run. If you look back, you will see that warfare was an invention, just as ways of handling government or taxes are inventions. You will see, too, that once people use an invention they go on using it until they find another which they think is superior.” ~ Margaret Mead

238. “The atmosphere is the key symbol of global interdependence.” ~ Margaret Mead

239. “I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw.” Margaret Mead

240. I learned the value of hard work by working hard.

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

242. “Tutte le discussioni sullo stato delle donne, sul carattere e il temperamento delle donne, sulla sottomissione o l’emancipazione delle donne, fanno perdere di vista il fatto fondamentale, e cioè che le parti dei due sessi sono concepite secondo la trama culturale che sta alla base dei rapporti umani e che il fanciullo che cresce è modellato, altrettanto inesorabilmente comeLa fanciulla, secondo un canone particolare e ben definito.”

243. “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

244. 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. The young are at home here. Their eyes have always seen satellites in the sky.. They have never known a world in which war did not mean annihilation.

245. “Chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, businessman or artist, a civilization in which there are many standards offers a possibility of satisfactory adjustment to individuals of many different temperamental types, of diverse gifts, and varying interests.” Margaret Mead

246. “What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.” Margaret Mead

247. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

248. “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.” Margaret Mead

249. The study of human culture is a context within which every aspect of human life legitimately falls and necessitates no rift between work and play, professional and amateur activities.

250. “I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences… This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of 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

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

252. “If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.”

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

254. “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

255. “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.”

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

257. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

258. “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

259. “There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.” Margaret Mead

260. Differences in sex as they are known today ... are based on the bringing up of the mother. She is always pushing the female towards similarity and the male towards differences.

261. “Be who you really are, do what you want to do, in order to have what you really want.” Margaret Mead

262. “If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.”

263. “For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.” Margaret Mead

264. “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

265. “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.”

266. “I learned the value of hard work by working hard.” ~ Margaret Mead

267. “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.”

268. The liberals have not softened their view of actuality to make themselves live closer to the dream, but instead sharpen their perceptions and fight to make the dream actuality or give up the battle in despair.

269. “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

270. “I'm unique just like everyone else”

271. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” Margaret Mead

272. “Women have an important contribution to make.”

273. “Even though the ship may go down, the journey goes on.” Margaret Mead

274. “Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression.” – Margaret Mead

275. “It is easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet.” ~ Margaret Mead

276. “Man’s most human characteristic is not his ability to

277. “…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

278. “An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift” ~ Margaret Mead

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

280. “A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.” ~ Margaret Mead

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

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

283. “We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.” ~ Margaret Mead

284. “The significance of the dance in the education and socialisation of Samoan children is two-fold. In the first place it effectively offsets the rigorous subordination in which children are habitually kept. Here the admonitions of the elders change from "Sit down and keep still!" to "Stand up and dance!" The children are actually the centre of the group instead of its barely tolerated fringes.”

285. “What I am demanding of other people is what I am demanding of myself.” Margaret Mead

286. “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

287. “What is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love.” ~ Margaret Mead

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

289. “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.”

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

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

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

293. “Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.” ~ Margaret Mead

294. “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

295. “I learned the value of hard work by working hard.” Margaret Mead

296. I think extreme heterosexuality is a perversion.

297. “You know my fury about people is based precisely on the fact that I consider them to be responsible, moral creatures who so often do not act that way.” – Margaret Mead

298. “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

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

300. “Ninety-nine percent of the time humans have lived on this planet we’ve lived in tribes, groups of 12 to 36 people. Only during times of war, or what we have now, which is the psychological equivalent of war, does the nuclear family prevail, because it’s the most mobile unit that can ensure the survival of the species. But for the full flowering of the human spirit, we need groups, tribes.” ~ Margaret Mead