353 Quotes by Margaret Mead

Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.

‎ When a person is born we rejoice, and when they're married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.

I 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.

Ninety-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.

in all cultures, human beings - in order to be human - must understand the nonhuman.

I suddenly realized that through no act of my own I had become biologically related to a new human being.

Living in the modern world, clothed and muffled, forced to convey our sense of our bodies in terms of remote symbols like walking sticks and umbrellas and handbags, it is easy to lose sight of the immediacy of the human body plan.

There are unidentified flying objects. That is, there are a hard core of cases-perhaps 20 to 30 percent in different studies-for which there is no explanation. We can only imagine what purpose lies behind the activities of these quiet, harmlessly cruising objects that time and again approach the Earth. The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is that they are simply watching what we are up to

Through a grandmother's voice and hands the end of life is known at the beginning.