Margaret Mead

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Even though the ship may go down, the journey goes on.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.”

“Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.”

“I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.”

“We make our own criminals, and their crimes are congruent with the national culture we all share. It has been said that a people get the kind of political leadership they deserve. I think they also get the kinds of crime and criminals they themselves bring into being.”

“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.”

“Each suburban housewife spends her time presiding over a power plant sufficient to have staffed the palace of a Roman emperor with a hundred slaves.”

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

“There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing...when we save our children, we save ourselves”

“It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet.”

“Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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