Margaret Mead Quotes

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

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.

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.

The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown... The children, the young, must ask the questions that we would never think to ask, but enough trust must be re-established so that the elders will be permitted to work with them on the answers.

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

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

Women have an important contribution to make.

"The notion that we are products of our environment is our greatest sin; we are products of our choices."
Margaret Mead
(this may not be her exact wording, but it's close enough).

There is no reason to think a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens cannot change the world; Indeed, that's the only thing that ever has.

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.

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

L'éducation est un processus culturel (...) par lequel chaque nouvel individu est transformé en membre à part entière d'une société humaine particulière, partageant avec les autres membres une culture particulière.

A great deal of what I say just leaves me open, I suppose, to a vast amount of misunderstanding. A great deal of what I say is based on an assumption which I hold and don’t always state. You know my fury about people is based precisely on the fact that I consider them to be responsible, moral creatures who so often do not act that way. But I am not surprised when they do. I am not that wretched a pessimist, and I wouldn’t sound the way I sound if I did not expect what I expect from human beings, if I didn’t have some ultimate faith and love, faith in them and love for them. You see, I am a human being too, and I have no right to stand in judgment of the world as though I am not a part of it. What I am demanding of other people is what I am demanding of myself.'
- James Baldwin

Too many people, when they reject God, go on believing in the devil. Many intellectuals have a sense of evil without a confidence in good.