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Margaret Mead Quotes - Page 7

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Monogamous heterosexual love is probably one of the most difficult, complex and demanding of human relationships.

Monogamous heterosexual love is probably one of the most difficult, complex and demanding of human relationships.

Margaret Mead
Love Is, Sexuality, Monogamy

Each home has been reduced to the bare essentials -- to barer essentials than most primitive people would consider possible. Only one woman's hands to feed the baby, answer the telephone, turn off the gas under the pot that is boiling over, soothe the older child who has broken a toy, and open both doors at once. She is a nutritionist, a child psychologist, an engineer, a production manager, an expert buyer, all in one. Her husband sees her as free to plan her own time, and envies her; she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.

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

People in America, of course, live in all sorts of fashions, because they are foreigners, or unlucky, or depraved, or without ambition; people live like that, but Americans live in white detached houses with green shutters. Rigidly, blindly, the dream takes precedence.

Margaret Mead
Dream, Fashion, Ambition

It used to be when we said, ''til death do us part,' death parted us pretty soon. That's why marriages used to last forever. Everybody was dead.

Margaret Mead
Forever, Lasts, Used

The assumption that men and woman are essentially alike in all respects, or even in the most important ones, is a damaging one, as damaging as the assumption that they are different in ways in which they aren't different, perhaps more so.

Margaret Mead
Men, Important, Different
Margaret Mead, Margaret Mary Caffrey, Patricia A. Francis (2006). “To Cherish the Life of the World: Selected Letters of Margaret Mead”, p.35, Basic Books

There are unidentified flying objects. That is, there are a hard core of cases-perhaps 20 to 30 percent in different studies-for which there is no explanation. We can only imagine what purpose lies behind the activities of these quiet, harmlessly cruising objects that time and again approach the Earth. The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is that they are simply watching what we are up to

Margaret Mead
Lying, Purpose, Earth

We end up with the contradictory picture of a society that appears to throw its doors wide open to women, but translates her every step towards success as having been damaging.

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

The way in which each human infant is transformed into the finished adult, into the complicated individual version of his city and his century is one of the most fascinating studies open to the curious minded.

Margaret Mead
Cities, Childhood, Adults
MARGARET MEAD (1930). “GROWING UP IN NEW GUINEA”

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

Margaret Mead
Thinking, Normal, Behavior
Redbook magazine, 1975.

We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.

Margaret Mead
Earth

No matter how free divorce, how frequently marriages break up, in most societies there is the assumption of permanent mating, of the idea that the marriage should last as long as both live. . . . No known society has ever invented a form of marriage strong enough to stick that did not contain the 'till death us do part' assumption.

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

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.

Margaret Mead
Change, Maturity, World

You just have to learn not to care about the dusty mites under the beds.

Margaret Mead
Bed, Care

Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.

Margaret Mead
Human Nature, Responding, Humans
"Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies". Book by Margaret Mead, 1935.

The prophet who fails to present a bearable alternative and yet preaches doom is part of the trap that he postulates. Not only does he picture us caught in a tremendous man-made or God-made trap from which there is no escape, but we must also listen to him day in, day out, describe how the trap is inexorably closing. To such prophecies the human race, as presently bred and educated and situated, is incapable of listening. So some dance and some immolate themselves as human torches; some take drugs and some artists spill their creativity in sets of randomly placed dots on a white ground.

Margaret Mead
Creativity, Men, Artist

Home, I learned, can be anywhere you make it. Home is also the place to which you come back again and again.

Margaret Mead
Home, Back Again, Again And Again
Margaret Mead (1972). “Blkberry Winter”

There is no evidence that suggests women are naturally better at caring for children... with the fact of child-bearing out of the centre of attention, there is even more reason for treating girls first as human beings, then as women.

Margaret Mead
Girl, Children, Caring

The institution of marriage in all societies is a pattern within which the strains put by civilization on males and females alike must be resolved, a pattern within which men must learn, in return for a variety of elaborate rewards, new forms in which sexual spontaneity is still possible, and women must learn to discipline their receptivity to a thousand other considerations.

Margaret Mead
Marriage, Men, Civilization
"Male and Female". Margaret Mead, Ladies' Home Journal, Volume 66 (p. 36), September 1949.

One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it.

Margaret Mead
Children, Animal, Welfare

We make our own criminals, and their crimes are congruent with the national culture we all share. It has been said that a people get the kind of political leadership they deserve. I think they also get the kinds of crime and criminals they themselves bring into being.

Margaret Mead
Thinking, People, Political
Margaret Mead, Rhoda Bubendey Métraux (1980). “Aspects of the Present”, William Morrow

laughter, that distinctively human emotion, laughter which springs from trust in the other, from willingness to put oneself momentarily in the other's place, even at one's own expense, is the special emotional basis of democratic procedures, just as pride is the emotion of an aristocracy, shame of a crowd that rules, and fear of a police state.

Margaret Mead
Laughter, Spring, Pride

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.

Margaret Mead
Travel, Home, Memorable
"Coming of Age in Samoa". Book by Margaret Mead, 1928.

The negative cautions of science are never popular.

Margaret Mead
Negative, Caution
Margaret Mead (1973). “Coming of Age in Samoa”

If man has not found ways to deal with environmental problems such as water and air pollution by 1998, it will be too late. The future is not determined and it lies in our own hands.

Margaret Mead
Lying, Men, Air

Grandparents are given a second chance to enjoy parenthood with fewer of its tribulations and anxieties.

Margaret Mead
Second Chance, Grandparent, Anxiety
Margaret Mead (1965). “Family”