Quote

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.

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
Matter
Idea
Sticks
Societies
Enough
Strong
Marriage
Frequently
Long
Death
Break
Invented
Form
Known
Assumption
Part
Society
Divorce
Ideas
Lasts
Stick
Mating
Ever
Last
Till
Marriages
Live
Free
Permanent
Contain

More quotes by 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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When I stand on a street in a Canadian city and look across the street, it couldn't be anywhere but Canada, but how can I prove it?
Margaret Mead
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One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it.
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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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.
Margaret Mead
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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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It was not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless this planet is - something that we must hold in our arms and care for.
Margaret Mead
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The differences between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature.
Margaret Mead
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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.
Margaret Mead
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Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.
Margaret Mead
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In our contemporary world, no one can think or work with a single picture of what a family is. No one can fit all human behavior, all thought and feeling, into a single pattern.
Margaret Mead
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Parents feel like immigrants in the country of the young.
Margaret Mead
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As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.
Margaret Mead
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It is not until science has become a discipline to which the research ability of any mind from any class in society can be attracted that it can become rigorously scientific.
Margaret Mead
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the task of each family is also the task of all humanity. This is to cherish the living, remember those who have gone before, and prepare for those who are not yet born.
Margaret Mead
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We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
Margaret Mead
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In contrast to our own social environment which brings out different aspects of human nature and often demonstrated that behavior which occurs almost invariably in individuals within our society is nevertheless due not to original nature but to social environment and a homogeneous and simple development of the individual may be studied.
Margaret Mead
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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.
Margaret Mead
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there are now no elders who know more than the young themselves about what the young are experiencing.
Margaret Mead
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As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.
Margaret Mead