A biography for Margaret Meadhasn’t been written yet.
“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”
“Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very old human need.”
“There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing...when we save our children, we save ourselves”
“Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone.”
“Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.”
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
“I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.”
“Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.”
“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.”
“A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.”
“Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.”
“I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.”
“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”
“Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.”
“What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.”
“Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.”
“It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.”
“We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.”
“The pains of childbirth were altogether different from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain. These were pains one could follow with one's mind.”
“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?”