Quotes from Margaret Mead

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?

If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.

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

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

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

I measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her fellow human beings.

My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.

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

An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift

Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

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.

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

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

Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship. ~Margaret Mead

I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw

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.

as the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep,so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily , to appreciate more lovingly , our own.

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

Sometimes, instead of helping people to advance, a discovery or an invention holds them back.

The time has come, I think, when we must recognize bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior.

No one will live all his life in the world into which he was born and no one will die in the world in which he worked in his maturity.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.

People are still encouraged to marry as if they could count on marriage being for life, and at the same time they are absorbing a knowledge of the great frequency of divorce.

I am interested in what happens to people who find the whole of life so rewarding that they are able to move through it with the same kind of delight in which a child moves through a game.