353 Quotes by Margaret Mead


  • Author Margaret Mead
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    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.

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  • Author Margaret Mead
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    One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and not be held responsible. [Cultural Factors in the Cause of Pathological Homicide. Bulletin of Menninger Clinic]

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  • Author Margaret Mead
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    We must turn all of our educational efforts to training our children for the choices which will confront them... The child who is to choose wisely must be healthy in mind and body. The children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

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  • Author Margaret Mead
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    I 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?

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