Authors:

Margaret Mead Quotes - Page 4

All Quotes Acceptance Age Anxiety Art Change Childhood Children Choices Country Culture Discipline Diversity Divorce Earth Education Elders Equality Evil Failing Family Feelings Fighting Freedom Funny Giving Grief Growing Up Home House Human Nature Humanity Husband Imagination Inspirational Justice Laughter Learning Life Lying Manners Marriage Motivational Nature Opportunity Passion Past Peace Purpose Quality Reality Responsibility Retiring Running School Science Sisterhood Sleep Society Study Success Suffering Survival Teaching Technology Training War Water Writing
Sometimes, instead of helping people to advance, a discovery or an invention holds them back.

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

Margaret Mead
Technology, Discovery, People
MARGARET MEAD (1959). “PEOPLE AND PLACES”

I learned the value of hard work by working hard.

Margaret Mead
Uplifting, Determination, Work
Attributed to Margaret Mead in Wayne Mazzoni "You Vs. You: Sport Psychology Got Life" (p. 90), 2005.

The assumption that men were created equal, with an equal ability to make an effort and win an earthly reward, although denied every day by experience, is maintained every day by our folklore and our daydreams.

Margaret Mead
Winning, Men, Effort
Margaret Mead (2000). “And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America”, p.125, Berghahn Books

It was not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless this planet is - something that we must hold in our arms and care for.

Margaret Mead
Moon, Environmental, Earth

If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.

Margaret Mead
Water, Would Be, Lasts

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

Margaret Mead
Family, Women, Matter
"Future Families". Margaret Mead in "The American People in the Age of Kennedy" edited by David M. Kennedy (p. 108), 1973.

Through a grandmother's voice and hands the end of life is known at the beginning.

Margaret Mead
Grandmother, Hands, Voice
Margaret Mead (1965). “Family”

You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don't like.

Margaret Mead
Smell

Even though the ship may go down, the journey goes on.

Margaret Mead
Failure, Journey, Goes On

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

Margaret Mead
Boyfriend, Fathers Day, Dad
Attributed to Margaret Mead in Harold A. Minden "Two Hugs for Survival" (p. 22), 1982.

If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one's subject matter.

Margaret Mead
Peace, Wall, Intelligent
"Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views". Book edited by Rhoda Metraux, 1963.

We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation.

Margaret Mead
Men, Differences, Generations
Male and Female ch. 1 (1949)

Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.

Margaret Mead
Running, Views, Groups
MARGARET MEAD (1959). “PEOPLE AND PLACES”

Of course we need children! Adults need children in their lives to listen to and care for, to keep their imagination fresh and their hearts young and to make the future a reality for which they are willing to work.

Margaret Mead
Children, Heart, Reality

Many people are shrinking from the future and from participation in the movement toward a new, expanded reality. And, like homesick travelers abroad, they are focusing their anxieties on home. The reasons are not far to seek. We are at a turning point in human history. . . . We could turn our attention to the problems that going to the Moon certainly will not solve ... But I think this would be fatal to our future. . . . A society that no longer moves forward does not merely stagnate; it begins to die.

Margaret Mead
Inspirational, Life, Moving

We grow up never questioning that which is unquestioned around us.

Margaret Mead
Growing Up, Questioning, Grows

No skill, no special apti­tude, no vividness of imagination or precision of thinking would go unrecognized because the child who possessed it was of one sex rather than the other. No child would be relentlessly shaped to one pattern of behavior, but instead there should be many patterns, in a world that had learned to allow to each individual the pattern which was most congenial to his gifts.

Margaret Mead
Sex, Children, Thinking
"Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies". Book by Margaret Mead, 1935.

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

Margaret Mead
Life, Relationship, Family

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
Birthday, Regret, Learning
"Teacher's Treasury of Stories for Every Occasion". Book by Millard Dale Baughman, 1958.

Female animals defending their young are notoriously ferocious and lack the playful delight in combat which characterizes the mock combats of males of the same species. There seems very little ground for claiming that the mother of young children is more peaceful, more responsible, and more thoughtful for the welfare of the human race than is her husband or brother.

Margaret Mead
Mother, Brother, Husband
Male and Female introduction (1955 edition)

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.

Margaret Mead
Motivational, Success, Congratulations
Margaret Mead, Rhoda Bubendey Métraux (1979). “Margaret Mead, some personal views”, Angus & Robertson

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

Margaret Mead
Women, Sisterhood, Want
In Quote Magazine 15 June 1958

In every human society of which we have any record, there are those who teach and those who learn, for learning a way of life is implicit in all human culture as we know it. But the separation of the teacher's role from the role of all adults who inducted the young into the habitual behavior of the group, was a comparatively late invention. Furthermore, when we do find explicit and defined teaching, in primitive societies we find it tied in with a sense of the rareness or the precariousness of some human tradition.

Margaret Mead
Teacher, Teaching, Adults
"An Anthropologist Looks at the Teacher's Role". Educational Method, Vol 21, p. 219-223, 1942.

Man's most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him.

Margaret Mead
Education, Learning, Men
"Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap". Book by Margaret Mead, 1970.

We must have...a place where children can have a whole group of adults they can trust.

Margaret Mead
Children, Adults, Groups