Margaret Mead Quotes

If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.

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.

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

Because our civilization is woven of so many diverse strands, the ideas which any one group accepts will be found to contain numerous contradictions.

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?

From a hundred cultures, [there is] one culture which does what no culture has ever done before-gives a place to every human gift.

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

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

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

We end up with the contradictory picture of a society that appears to throw its doors wide open to women, but translates her every step towards success as having been damaging.

The older child who has lost or broken some valuable thing will be found when his parents return, not run away, not willing to confess, but in a deep sleep The thief whose case is being tried falls asleep

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.

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?

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.

We came to realize that a civilization which rode roughshod over the way of life of other peoples was incorporating evil in its own way of life.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends ... In England, for instance, you find everyone in your class has read the same books. Here, people grope for something in common-like a newly engaged girl who came to me and said, It's absolutely wonderful! His uncle and my cousin were on the same football team.

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

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

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.

Today's children are the first generation to grow up in a world that has the power to destroy itself.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don't like.

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

Coming to terms with the rhythms of women's lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation.

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

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

For Immanuel Kant, the term anthropology embraced all the human sciences, and laid the foundation of familiar knowledge we need, to build solidly grounded ideas about the moral and political demands of human life. Margaret Mead saw mid-twentieth-century anthropology as engaged in a project no less ambitious than Kant's own, and her Terry Lectures on Continuities in Cultural Evolution provide an excellent point to enter into her reflections.

The experience of having brothers and sisters, born of the same parents, sleeping under the same roof, eating at the same table, is an inescapable, delightful and repelling, desired and abhorred part of each child's life.

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 ...

The mind is not sex-typed.

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

Wonder is very important, because if we never wondered, we would never get to the point of asking questions. Yet wonder may lead people to write poetry or to paint pictures or to pray, as well as to ask the kinds of questions about the world and themselves that can be answered by science.

An education not founded on Art will never succeed.

For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.

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.

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.

There are now no elders who know more than the young themselves about what the young are experiencing.

I'm unique just like everyone else

I've been married three times - and each time I married the right person.

It is not until science has become a discipline to which the research ability of any mind from any class in society can be attracted that it can become rigorously scientific.

What we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel. What we seldom "take" is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us.

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

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.

Most people prefer to carry out the kinds of experiments that allow the scientist to feel that he is in full control of the situation rather than surrendering himself to the situation, as one must in studying human beings as they actually live.

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

Chief among our gains must be reckoned this possibility of choice, the recognition of many possible ways of life, where other civilizations have recognized only one. Where other civilizations give a satisfactory outlet to only one temperamental type, be he mystic or soldier, business man 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.

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.

Keeping even the most humble talent wrapped in a napkin becomes the more reprehensible the greater the emergency.

[Mead described the Arapesh as a culture in which both sexes were] placid and contented, unaggressive and noninitiatory, noncompetitive and responsive, warm, docile, and trusting.

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

Just as the difference in height between males is no longer a realistic issue, now that lawsuits have been substituted for hand-to-hand encounters, so the difference in strength between men and women is no longer worth elaboration in cultural institutions.

Children not only have to learn what their parents learned in school, but also have to learn how to learn. This has to be recognized as a new problem which is only partly solved.

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.

Women have an important contribution to make.

Life is in one of its smoother phases ... I've no responsibilities in the world except friends and students and cherishing the life of the world
and the belief that there is enough love to go round.

An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift

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.

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.

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.

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.

Each home has been reduced to the bare essentials
to barer essentials than most primitive people would consider possible. Only one woman's hands to feed the baby, answer the telephone, turn off the gas under the pot that is boiling over, soothe the older child who has broken a toy, and open both doors at once. She is a nutritionist, a child psychologist, an engineer, a production manager, an expert buyer, all in one. Her husband sees her as free to plan her own time, and envies her; she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.

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

The notion that we are products of our environment is our greatest sin; we are products of our choices.
Margaret Mead
(this may not be her exact wording, but it's close enough).

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

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.

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

We must have ... a place where children can have a whole group of adults they can trust.

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.

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.

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.

Humanity ... lies in man's capacity to question the known and imagine the unknown.

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.

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.

One characteristic of Americans is that they have no toleration at all of anybody putting up with anything. We believe that whatever is going wrong ought to be fixed.

Mourning has become unfashionable in the United States. The bereaved are supposed to pull themselves together as quickly as possible and to reweave the torn fabric of life ... we do not allow ... for the weeks and months during which a loss is realized - a beautiful word that suggests the transmutation of the strange into something that is one's own.

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

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

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

Photographs [are] of course heavily dependent upon the culture, the disciplinary point of view and the idiosyncratic vision of the particular photographer-analyst.

There is no more creative force in the world than the menopausal woman with zest.

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

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.

Some veil between childhood and the present is necessary. If the veil is withdrawn, the artistic imagination sickens and dies, the prophet looks in the mirror with a disillusioned and cynical sneer, the scientist goes fishing.

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

Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.

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.

Earth Day is the first holy day ... and is devoted to the harmony of nature ... The celebration offends no historical calendar, yet it transcends them all.

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