Quotes By Margaret Mead

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

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

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

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.