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Margaret Mead Quotes - Page 2

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You can no longer save your family, tribe or nation. You can only save the whole world.

You can no longer save your family, tribe or nation. You can only save the whole world.

Margaret Mead
World, Tribes, Our Family

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

Margaret Mead
Wise, Wisdom, Growing Up

There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.

Margaret Mead
Zest, World, Greater Power

Whatever advantages may have arisen, in the past, out of the existence of a specially favored and highly privileged aristocracy, it is clear to me that today no argument can stand that supports unequal opportunity or any intrinsic disqualification for sharing in the whole of life.

Margaret Mead
Past, Opportunity, Equality
Margaret Mead (1972). “Blkberry Winter”

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.

Margaret Mead
Family, Impossible Situations, Support
"Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap". Book by Margaret Mead, 1970.

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

Margaret Mead
Children, Growing Up, Adults
Attributed to Margaret Mead in Anita E. Woolfolk "Educational Psychology" (p. 212), 1980.

We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of the country.

Margaret Mead
Country, Religious, Freedom
Margaret Mead, Rhoda Bubendey Métraux (1979). “Margaret Mead, some personal views”, Angus & Robertson

A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.

Margaret Mead
Order, Two, Promise

We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.

Margaret Mead
Inspirational, Children, Future
"The Energy Crisis - Why Our World Will Never Again Be the Same". Margaret Mead, "Redbook", 1974, later quoted in Hugh Nash "Progress As If Survival Mattered: A Handbook For A Conserver Society" (p. 166), 1977.

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.

Margaret Mead
Arrogance, Self Control, Culture
Margaret Mead (2000). “And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America”, p.152, Berghahn Books

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
Women, History, Diversity
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies conclusion (1935)

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
Unique, Consciousness, Crisis
Margaret Mead (1964). “Continuities in Cultural Evolution”, p.3, Transaction Publishers

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world.

Margaret Mead
Change, Thoughtful, People

...recognize and respect Earth's beautiful systems of balance, between the presence of animals on land, the fish in the sea, birds in the air, mankind, water, air, and land. Most importantly there must always be awareness of the actions by people that can disturb this precious balance.

Margaret Mead
Beautiful, Respect, Animal

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
Sex, Children, Acceptance
Margaret Mead (1972). “Twentieth century faith: hope and survival”

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.

Margaret Mead
Love, Dance, Song
"Margaret Mead: A Life". Book by Jane Howard, 1984.

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

Margaret Mead
Humanity, Together, Woven
Margaret Mead (1975). “Male and female: a study of the sexes in a changing world”, William Morrow & Co

We must recognize that beneath the superficial classifications of sex and race the same potentialities exist, recurring generation after generation, only to perish because society has no place for them.

Margaret Mead
Sex, Race, Generations
Margaret Mead (1963). “Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies”

Even very recently, the elders could say: 'You know, I have been young and you never have been old.' But today's young people can reply: 'You never have been young in the world I am young in, and you never can be.' ... the older generation will never see repeated in the lives of young people their own unprecedented experience of sequentially emerging change. This break between generations is wholly new: it is planetary and universal.

Margaret Mead
People, Generations, World

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

Margaret Mead
Children, Teaching, Simple
Margaret Mead (1975). “Male and female: a study of the sexes in a changing world”, William Morrow & Co

Somehow, we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, acquire knowledge of the past, and provide a sense of the future.

Margaret Mead
Children, Past, People

Our human situation no longer permits us to make armed dichotomies between those who are good and those who are evil, those who are right and those who are wrong. The first blow dealt to the enemy's children will sign the death warrant of our own.

Margaret Mead
Children, Blow, Evil
Margaret Mead (1964). “Continuities in Cultural Evolution”, p.323, Transaction Publishers

No society has ever yet been able to handle the temptations of technology to mastery, to waste, to exuberance, to exploration and exploitation... We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish it as something that's fragile, that's only one, it's all we have... We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.

Margaret Mead
Technology, Temptation, Mastery
"Margaret Mead, 1901-1978: One of the Most Famous Anthropologists in the World". Voice of America Special English: "People in America" with Steve Ember and Shirley Griffith, learningenglish.voanews.com. July 1, 2011.

We need every human gift and cannot afford to neglect any gift because of artificial barriers of sex or race or class or national origin.

Margaret Mead
Sex, Race, Class

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

Margaret Mead
Children, Insight, Recognizing