88 quotes
Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.
Talent Development for English Language Learners: Identifying and Developing Potential (2013)
We — mankind — stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device — our consciousness of the crisis — as our unique contribution.
Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964)
Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.
Bright Words for Dark Days: Meditations for Women Who Get the Blues (1994)
The semimetaphysical problems of the individual and society, of egoism and altruism, of freedom and determinism, either disappear or remain in the form of different phases in the organization of a consciousness that is fundamentally social.
Growing Up in New Guinea (1930)
[Partly as a consequence of male authority] prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
To cherish the life of the world.
It [this book] is, very simply, an account of how three primitive societies have grouped their social attitudes towards temperament about the very obvious facts of sex-difference.
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.
to Mead in Mead Childhood Education Vol. 54 (1977)
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.
People and Places (1959)
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.
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
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.
Twentieth Century Faith : Hope and Survival (1972)
The Samoan puts the burden of amatory success upon the man and believes that women need more initiating, more time for maturing of sexual feeling. A man who fails to satisfy a woman is looked upon as a clumsy, inept blunderer.
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)
Laughter is man's most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man.
Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views (1979)
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.
Teacher's Treasury of Stories for Every Occasion (1958)
Today our approaches to children are fragmented and partial. Those who care for well children know little of children who are sick. The deep knowledge that comes from the intensive attempt to cure is separated from the knowledge of those whose main task is to teach.
Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964)
We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.
How They Work In Indiana : Business-Education Partnerships (1994)
In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world.
People and Places (1959)
It has been a woman's task throughout history to go on believing in life when there was almost no hope. lf we are united, we may be able to produce a world in which our children and other people's children will be safe.
Margaret Mead (1978)
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.
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: Some Personal Views (1979)