Margaret Mead

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

— Margaret Mead

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

— Margaret Mead

“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

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

— Margaret Mead

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

— Margaret Mead

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

— Margaret Mead

“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

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

— Margaret Mead

“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

“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.”

— Margaret Mead

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

— Margaret Mead

“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

“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

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

— Margaret Mead

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

— Margaret Mead

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

— Margaret Mead

“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

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

— Margaret Mead

“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

“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