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

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
Aggression
Aggressive
Destructive
Nature
Human
Humans
Potentially
Orderly
Constructive

More quotes by Margaret Mead

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Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.
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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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I suddenly realized that through no act of my own I had become biologically related to a new human being.
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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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The assumption that men and woman are essentially alike in all respects, or even in the most important ones, is a damaging one, as damaging as the assumption that they are different in ways in which they aren't different, perhaps more so.
Margaret Mead
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Our human situation no longer permits us to make armed dichotomies between those who are good and those who are evil, those who are right and those who are wrong. The first blow dealt to the enemy's children will sign the death warrant of our own.
Margaret Mead
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One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
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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.
Margaret Mead
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we came to realize that a civilization which rode roughshod over the way of life of other peoples was incorporating evil in its own way of life.
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Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.
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An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift
Margaret Mead
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Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them.
Margaret Mead
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The important thing about women today is, as they get older, they still keep house. It's one reason why they don't die, but men die when they retire. Women just polish the teacups.
Margaret Mead
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I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.
Margaret Mead
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No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.
Margaret Mead
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In this country, some people start being miserable about growing old while they are still young.
Margaret Mead
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The negative cautions of science are never popular.
Margaret Mead
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Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.
Margaret Mead
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Human beings do not carry civilization in their genes. All that we do carry in our genes are certain capacities- the capacity to learn to walk upright, to use our brains, to speak, to relate to our fellow men, to construct and use tools, to explore the universe, and to express that exploration in religion, in art, in science, in philosophy.
Margaret Mead
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WE MUST DEVISE A SYSTEM IN WHICH PEACE IS MORE REWARDING THAN WAR.
Margaret Mead