Margaret Mead

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

“Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.”

“Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.”

“One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.”

“The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.”

“Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.”

“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”

“Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.”

“I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.”

“Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.”

“We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.”

“Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.”

“Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.”

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

“I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.”

“Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.”

“I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.”

“And when our baby stirs and struggles to be born it compels humility: what we began is now its own.”

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

“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.”