26 Margaret Mead Quotes
1901 – 1978
Find words of wisdom in these famous Margaret Mead quotes. She was born in Philadelphia, PA, USA. She was an cultural anthropologist and an author on the topic.
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
Inspirational Quotes | Commitment
To understand personality it is necessary to study character formation.
Margaret Mead
Character | Quote of The Day
I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.
Margaret Mead
Funny |
Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.
Margaret Mead
Being Yourself |
In the contemporary world we face a crisis which man must surmount if he is to survive. On every hand there are loud cries that solutions to our present dilemma should be sought consciously and energetically. Many of those who make such demands have little understanding of the ways in which the search for solutions can be undertaken, and they fail to recognize that innovations in the field of human behavior require conditions which are different from those necessary for innovations in the natural sciences or in technology.
Margaret Mead
Failure |
I argue that among the conditions which make it possible for a man of exceptional ability, that type of exceptional ability which we call genius, to make a contribution to cultural change is the special composition of the cluster of individuals with whom he interacts and through whom he interacts also with others.
Margaret Mead
Genius |
We, mankind, stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device, our consciousness of the crisis, as our unique contribution.
Margaret Mead
Quotes about Life |
The choice of problem in science is never entirely free from influences from the wider world of public opinion. As science becomes more a recognized part of life and less a separate compartment for the private and special inquiries of those who are mysteriously dedicated to their esoteric endeavors, the connection between scientific direction and society will become greater.
Margaret Mead
Choice |
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
Diversity |
Unlike a report on a piece of field work, which stands forever as a valuable record if carried out with fidelity to the scientific canons of the day, an adventure in theory which really relies on materials and is not merely imposed upon them is, in one sense, only as good as the original materials.
Margaret Mead
Good |
In the year 2010 we will still be asking new questions, questions raised by the other human sciences, questions grown urgent in the light of new forms of social organization, on this earth and perhaps on other planets. There will be no primitive peoples left to study: there will be a few anthropologists who studied primitive cultures in their youth, who can be asked to help reorganize the existing materials in a way that may be fruitful.
Margaret Mead
Questioning |
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
Regret |
Theory cannot be read backwards. It is as much a task to place oneself intellectually twenty-five years back as it is to place oneself within another culture, and it is an activity which is equally anthropological in the intellectual elasticity it requires. But if one learns to do this, then the struggles of an earlier age become available at another level, and as students learn from the history of the natural sciences, so also they can learn from the youth of the human sciences.
Margaret Mead
Learning |
I learned the value of hard work by working hard.
Margaret Mead
Work |
One of the pleasant by-products of publication in paperbacks is the opportunity it provides for second thoughts.
Margaret Mead
Opportunity |
In fact, anthropology is a field in which the original statements describing primitive peoples can stand forever; for the peoples we have described will have changed so much that no restudy of their lives can introduce very many corrections into the record of what they once were.
Margaret Mead
Change |
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.
Margaret Mead
Age |
The Korean War marked a turning point in American attitudes towards marriage and the family and established as a permanent trend what we had regarded as a Second World War adjustment.
Margaret Mead
Family |
While a few of us were aware of the tremendous alterations in man’s relationship to man that had been set in motion by the new forms of communication, the discovery and use of nuclear weapons, the growing strength of communist evangelism, and the growth of population all over the world, public opinion had not yet reckoned with these problems.
Margaret Mead
Communication |
Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.
Margaret Mead
Sister |
The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.
Margaret Mead
Children |
What the world needs is not romantic lovers who are sufficient unto themselves, but husbands and wives who live in communities, relate to other people, carry on useful work and willingly give time and attention to their children.
Margaret Mead
Husband | Wife
The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown… The children, the young, must ask the questions that we would never think to ask, but enough trust must be re-established so that the elders will be permitted to work with them on the answers.
Margaret Mead
Trust |
We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.
Margaret Mead
Wise |
I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, ‘Does he have to be old?
Margaret Mead
Funny Quotes about Life |
In each age there is a series of pressing questions which must be asked and answered. On the correctness of the questions depends the survival of those who ask; on the quality of the answers depends the quality of the life those survivors will lead.
Margaret Mead
Poems about Life |
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