Margaret Mead Quotes

"To cherish the life of the world."

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

"Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive"

"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 gift will find a fitting place."

"When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed."

"The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations."

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

"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."

"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"

"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."

"Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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