353 Quotes by Margaret Mead

I did not write it [Coming of Age in Samoa] as a popular book, but only with the hope that it would be intelligible to those who might make the best use of its theme, that adolescence need not be the time of stress and strain which Western society made it; that growing up could be freer and easier and less complicated; and also that there were prices to pay for the very lack of complication I found in Samoa - less intensity, less individuality, less involvement with life.

The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.

If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.

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

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.

You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don't like.

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.

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.

When I stand on a street in a Canadian city and look across the street, it couldn't be anywhere but Canada, but how can I prove it?