Quotes By Margaret Mead

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

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.

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

I learned the value of hard work by working hard.

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

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.

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.

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

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.

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

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

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