There is no lonelier person than the one who lives with a spouse with whom he or she cannot communicate.
Margaret MeadOur 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 Meadwhere families suffer from disasters that are preventable, this is a measure of a whole nation's neglect. A society imperils its own future when, out of negligence or contempt, it overlooks the need of children to be reared in a family ... or when, in the midst of plenty, some families cannot give their children adequate food and shelter, safe activity and rest, and an opportunity to grow into full adulthood as people who can care for and cherish other human beings like themselves.
Margaret MeadThe capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends... . In England, for instance, you find everyone in your class has read the same books. Here, people grope for something in common-like a newly engaged girl who came to me and said, "It's absolutely wonderful! His uncle and my cousin were on the same football team.
Margaret MeadAs 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 MeadJust as the difference in height between males is no longer a realistic issue, now that lawsuits have been substituted for hand-to-hand encounters, so the difference in strength between men and women is no longer worth elaboration in cultural institutions.
Margaret MeadNinety-nine percent of the time humans have lived on this planet we've lived in tribes, groups of 12 to 36 people. Only during times of war, or what we have now, which is the psychological equivalent of war, does the nuclear family prevail, because it's the most mobile unit that can ensure the survival of the species. But for the full flowering of the human spirit we need groups, tribes.
Margaret MeadI approached the idea of college with the expectation of taking part in an intellectual feast. ... In college, in some way that I devoutly believed in but could not explain, I expected to become a person.
Margaret MeadIn our contemporary world, no one can think or work with a single picture of what a family is. No one can fit all human behavior, all thought and feeling, into a single pattern.
Margaret MeadWhat is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love.
Margaret MeadInjustice experienced in the flesh, in deeply wounded flesh, is the stuff out of which change explodes.
Margaret MeadEARTH DAY uses one of humanity's great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon.
Margaret MeadWe may say that many, if not all, of the personality traits which we have called masculine or feminine are as lightly linked to sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of headdress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex.
Margaret MeadWhen human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed.
Margaret MeadWomen are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.
Margaret MeadThe negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short-cut answer.
Margaret MeadI have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.
Margaret MeadThe most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods. Such methods are designed to help average teachers approximate the performance of good teachers.
Margaret MeadNo 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 MeadLove is the invention of a few high cultures ... it is cultural artifact. To make love the requirement of a lifelong marriage is exceedingly difficult, and only a few people can achieve it. I don't believe in setting universal standards that a large proportion of people can't reach.
Margaret MeadIt has been a woman's task throughout history to go on believing in life when there was almost no hope.
Margaret Mead... some veil between childhood and the present is necessary. If the veil is withdrawn, the artistic imagination sickens and dies, the prophet looks in the mirror with a disillusioned and cynical sneer, the scientist goes fishing.
Margaret MeadI discovered when I had a child of my own that I had become a biased observer of small children. Instead of looking at them with affectionate but nonpartisan eyes, I saw each of them as older or younger, bigger or smaller, more or less graceful, intelligent, or skilled than my own child.
Margaret MeadMourning has become unfashionable in the United States. The bereaved are supposed to pull themselves together as quickly as possible and to reweave the torn fabric of life. ... we do not allow ... for the weeks and months during which a loss is realized - a beautiful word that suggests the transmutation of the strange into something that is one's own.
Margaret MeadI devoutly believe that there is no difficulty between two people for which both are not responsible.
Margaret MeadWe 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 MeadIf we are to give our utmost effort and skill and enthusiasm, we must believe in ourselves, which means believing in our past and in our future, in our parents and in our children, in that particular blend of moral purpose and practical inventiveness which is the American character.
Margaret MeadAll of us who grew up before World War II are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before.
Margaret MeadEven 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 MeadI 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?
Margaret MeadIf 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 MeadNo 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 Meadthe people of one nation alone cannot save their own children; each holds the responsibility for the others' children.
Margaret MeadNo 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 MeadI suddenly realized that through no act of my own I had become biologically related to a new human being.
Margaret Mead