Margaret Mead Quotes

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 If the veil is withdrawn, the artistic imagination sickens and dies, the prophet looks in the mirror with a disillusioned and cynical sneer, the scientist goes fishing."

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

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

"I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind-which was also his mother's-I learned that the mind is not sex-typed."

"The United States has the power to destroy the world, but not the power to save it alone"

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"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"

"Old age is like flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do."

"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 in an impossible situation."

"The natives are superficially agreeable, but they go in for cannibalism, headhunting, infanticide, incest, avoidance and joking relationships, and biting lice in half with their teeth"

"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 may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good."

"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."