Wise Margaret Mead Quotes

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world.
For, indeed, that's all who ever have.
- Margaret Mead

The solution to adult problems tomorrow
depends in large measure upon
how our children grow up today.
- Margaret Mead

For the very first time the young are
seeing history being made
before it is censored by their elders.
- Margaret Mead

Many societies have educated their male children
on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.
- Margaret Mead

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.
- Margaret Mead

As long as any adult thinks that he,
like the parents and teachers of old,
can become introspective,
invoking his own youth to understand
the youth before him,
he is lost.
- Margaret Mead

Sister is probably the most competitive
relationship within the family,
but once the sisters are grown,
it becomes the strongest relationship.
- Margaret Mead

Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive
and potentially orderly and constructive.
- Margaret Mead

And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born
it compels humility: what we began is now its own.
- Margaret Mead

Instead of needing lots of children,
we need high-quality children.
- Margaret Mead

Nobody has ever asked the nuclear family to live
all by itself in a box the way we do.
With no relatives, no support,
we've put it in an impossible situation.
- Margaret Mead

The way to do fieldwork is never to
come up for air until it is all over.
- Margaret Mead

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.
- Margaret Mead

Always remember that you are absolutely unique.
Just like everyone else.
- Margaret Mead

Life ... is like a parachute jump:
you have to get it right the first time.
- Margaret Mead

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

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

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

I was wise enough to never grow up
while fooling most people into believing I had.
- Margaret Mead

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

Anthropology demands the open-mindedness
with which one must look and listen,
record in astonishment
and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
- Margaret Mead

It is an open question whether any behavior
based on fear of eternal punishment
can be regarded as ethical
or should be regarded as merely cowardly.
- Margaret Mead

Thanks to television, for the first time
the young are seeing history made
before it is censored by their elders.
- Margaret Mead

I have a respect for manners as such,
they are a way of dealing with people
you don't agree with or like.
- Margaret Mead

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

Prayer does not use up artificial energy,
doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute.
Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
- Margaret Mead

The pains of childbirth were altogether different
from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain.
These were pains one could follow with one's mind.
- Margaret Mead

I do not believe in using women in combat,
because females are too fierce.
- Margaret Mead

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors,
woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile
and never directly inherited.
- Margaret Mead

A city is a place where there is no need to
wait for next week to get the answer to a question,
to taste the food of any country,
to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.
- Margaret Mead

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values,
we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities,
and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric,
one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.
- Margaret Mead

People that seem so glorious are all show;
underneath they are like everyone else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whenever you're in conflict with someone,
there is one factor that can make the difference
between damaging your relationship and deepening it.
That factor is attitude.
- William James

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends,
of most of the people you see every day,
is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
- Theodore H. White

There are three classes of people:
those who see,
those who see when they are shown,
those who do not see.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Many people excuse their own faults
but judge other persons harshly.
We should reverse this attitude
by excusing others' shortcomings
and by harshly examining our own.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

Go to the people
Live among them
Learn from them
Love them
Serve them
Plan with them
Start with what they know
Build on what they have.
- Jimmy Yen (Y. C. James Yen)

The wicked leader is he who the people despise.
The good leader is he who the people revere.
The great leader is he who the people say, "We did it ourselves."
- Lao Tzu

The way to happiness is what I call Zero-Based Gratitude.
Each day be happy and grateful for what you have,
independent of yesterday and of other people.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Many people allow their need
for other people's approval to control their lives.
They spend their lives worrying about what others think of them.
- Rick Warren

A common denominator of all religions is that
they have the power to bring out the best and the worst in people.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What people often mean by getting rid of conflict
is getting rid of diversity,
and it is of the utmost importance
that these should not be considered the same.
- M. P. Follett

Worthless people live only to eat and drink;
people of worth eat and drink only to live.
- Socrates

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand
my complaint about them not understanding me.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand;
they listen with the intent to reply.
- Stephen R. Covey

If a million people say a foolish thing,
it is still a foolish thing.
- Anatole France

People should think things out fresh
and not just accept conventional terms
and the conventional way of doing things.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west;
people create distinctions out of their own minds
and then believe them to be true.
- The Buddha

People are not disturbed by things,
but by the view they take of them.
- Epictetus

Knowing your own darkness is the best method
for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
- Carl Jung

It is only in adventure that some people
succeed in knowing themselves -
in finding themselves.
- Andre Gide

Look at other people and ask yourself
if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care
for people will hear them and be influenced
by them for good or ill.
- The Buddha

"Go to the people and live among them
in order to know them and learn from them.
- Jimmy Yen

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed;
if in terms of ten years, plant trees;
if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.
- Confucius

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Wisdom Quotes