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It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.

Margaret Mead

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Margaret Mead
Age: 76 †
Born: 1901
Born: December 16
Died: 1978
Died: November 15
Anthropologist
Cultural Anthropologist
Curator
Film Director
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Necessary
Accepting
Temporarily
Evil
Lesser
May
Label
Must
Labels
Good
Acceptance
Never
Honesty
Accept

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Blackberry winter, the time when the hoarforst lies on the blackberry blossoms without this frost the berries will not set. It is the forerunner of a rich harvest.
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
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It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.
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The negative cautions of science are never popular.
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We grow up never questioning that which is unquestioned around us.
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There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.
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The atmosphere is the key symbol of global interdependence.
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Everybody's suffering is mine but not everybody's murdering ... I do not distinguish for one moment whether my child is in danger or a child in central Asia. But I will not accept responsibility for what other people do because I happen to belong to that nation or that race or that religion. I do not believe in guilt by association.
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[Partly as a consequence of male authority] prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.
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Contentment can be bought at a price that one can not possibly pay.
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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.
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The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society.
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Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone.
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I don't consider my marriages as failures! It's idiotic to assume that because a marriage ends, it's failed.
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No matter how free divorce, how frequently marriages break up, in most societies there is the assumption of permanent mating, of the idea that the marriage should last as long as both live. . . . No known society has ever invented a form of marriage strong enough to stick that did not contain the 'till death us do part' assumption.
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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.
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Living in the modern world, clothed and muffled, forced to convey our sense of our bodies in terms of remote symbols like walking sticks and umbrellas and handbags, it is easy to lose sight of the immediacy of the human body plan.
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You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don't like.
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I've been married three times - and each time I married the right person.
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American society is very like a fish society. . . . Among certain species of fish, the only thing which determines order of dominance is length of time in the fishbowl. The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he, as oldest resident, will pick on the newcomers.
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