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.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Science
Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: One liners, Father
People in America, of course, live in all sorts of fashions, because they are foreigners, or unlucky, or depraved, or without ambition; people live like that, but Americans live in white detached houses with green shutters. Rigidly, blindly, the dream takes precedence.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: America
I’ve been married three times—and each time I married the right person.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Marriage
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.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Housework
The suffering of either sex—of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult—this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Women
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Growth, Zen, Kindness, Courage, Teamwork, Wildlife, Doubt, Action, Change, People
One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Relationships, Humankind, Humanity
If I were to be taken hostage, I would not plead for release nor would I want my government to be blackmailed. I think certain government officials, industrialists and celebrated persons should make it clear they are prepared to be sacrificed if taken hostage. If that were done, what gain would there be for terrorists in taking hostages?
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Terrorism
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
Topics: Manners
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
Topics: Achievement, Purpose
The prophet who fails to present a bearable alternative and yet preaches doom is part of the trap that he postulates. Not only does he picture us caught in a tremendous man-made or God-made trap from which there is no escape, but we must also listen to him day in, day out, describe how the trap is inexorably closing. To such prophecies the human race, as presently bred and educated and situated, is incapable of listening. So some dance and some immolate themselves as human torches; some take drugs and some artists spill their creativity in sets of randomly placed dots on a white ground.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Prophecy
Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Women
It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Evil, Goodness
It’s easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet.
—Margaret Mead
Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump; you have to get it right the first time.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Life and Living
I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Success, Helpfulness
You just have to learn not to care about the dust-mice under the beds.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Perfection
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.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Aging, Age
Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.
—Margaret Mead
Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, “Go to sleep by yourselves.” And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Independence
Sooner or later I’m going to die, but I’m not going to retire.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Retirement
For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Media
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
Topics: Envy, Jealousy, Happiness
We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Wildlife
Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Behavior, Humanity, Manners
Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Children
I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Aging
Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-hearted attempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Sex
No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
—Margaret Mead
Topics: Family
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Carlos Castaneda Peruvian-born American Anthropologist
- Stephen Jay Gould American Paleontologist
- Erica Jong American Novelist, Poet
- William Graham Sumner American Polymath
- Francine du Plessix Gray American Writer, Literary Critic
- M. Scott Peck American Psychiatrist
- Buckminster Fuller American Inventor, Philosopher
- Joan Rivers American Entertainer
- William Safire American Columnist, Editor
- Bill Cosby American Actor
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