Margaret Mead Inspirational Quotes (150)

It is of very doubtful value to enlist the gifts of a woman into fields that have been defined as male it frightens the men, unsexes the women, and muffles and distorts the contribution women could make.

Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.

[Among the Arapeh... both father and mother are held responsible for child care by the entire community...] If one comments upon a middle-aged man as good-looking, the people answer: 'Good-looking? Ye-e-e-s? But you should have seen him before he bore all those children'.

Women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.

The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown... The children, the young, must ask the questions that we would never think to ask, but enough trust must be re-established so that the elders will be permitted to work with them on the answers.

Man's most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him.