Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
Margaret Meadwas an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College in New York City and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth16 December 1901
CityPhiladelphia, PA
CountryUnited States of America
children teaching simple
Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.
order two promise
A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.
sex race generations
We must recognize that beneath the superficial classifications of sex and race the same potentialities exist, recurring generation after generation, only to perish because society has no place for them.
hate love-is demand
To demand that another love what one loves is tyranny enough, but to demand that another hate what one hates, is even worse.
science air listening
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.
life relationship family
One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
friends beautiful clever
Between friends there is no bribery. ... the relationship of friends is intrinsically fair and equal. Neither feels stronger or more clever or more beautiful than the other.
men males prestige
[Partly as a consequence of male authority] prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.
human-nature responding humans
Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.
motivational success congratulations
I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.
war technology hands
The most intractable problem today is not pollution or technology or war; but the lack of belief that the future is very much in the hands of the individual.
humanity together patterns
Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.
arrogance self-control culture
There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.
children sleep independent
Our treatment of both older people and children reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, Go to sleep by yourselves. And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.