353 Quotes by Margaret Mead

Cynicism is the other thing that goes with sentimentality ...

Maleness in America is not absolutely defined; it has to be kept and re-earned every day, and one essential element in the definition is beating women in every game that both sexes play.

It is not until science has become a discipline to which the research ability of any mind from any class in society can be attracted that it can become rigorously scientific.

human beings seem to hold on more tenaciously to a cultural identity that is learned through suffering than to one that has been acquired through pleasure and delight.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.

The negative cautions of science are never popular.

If they learn easily, they are penalized for being bored when they have nothing to do; if they excel in some outstanding way, they are penalized as being conspicuously better than the peer group. The culture tries to make the child with a gift into a one-sided person, to penalize him at every turn, to cause him trouble in making friends and to create conditions conducive to the development of a neurosis. Neither teachers, the parents of other children, nor the child peers will tolerate a Wunderkind.

Female animals defending their young are notoriously ferocious and lack the playful delight in combat which characterizes the mock combats of males of the same species. There seems very little ground for claiming that the mother of young children is more peaceful, more responsible, and more thoughtful for the welfare of the human race than is her husband or brother.

You can no longer save your family, tribe or nation. You can only save the whole world.