Quote

If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one's subject matter.

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
Cannot
Subjects
Grasp
States
Wall
Walls
Better
Gets
Twelve
Matter
Year
Clearly
Enough
Within
University
Even
State
Remain
Years
Peace
Subject
Cloistered
Understand
Intelligent
Laboratory

More quotes by 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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Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them.
Margaret Mead
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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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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.
Margaret Mead
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In each age there is a series of pressing questions which must be asked and answered. On the correctness of the questions depends the survival of those who ask on the quality of the answers depends the quality of the life those survivors will lead.
Margaret Mead
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Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.
Margaret Mead
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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.
Margaret Mead
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Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.
Margaret Mead
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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.
Margaret Mead
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Instead of needing lots of children, we need high-quality children.
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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We may say that many, if not all, of the personality traits which we have called masculine or feminine are as lightly linked to sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of headdress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex.
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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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.
Margaret Mead
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Be who you really are, do what you want to do, in order to have what you really want.
Margaret Mead
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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.
Margaret Mead
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The older child who has lost or broken some valuable thing will be found when his parents return, not run away, not willing to confess, but in a deep sleep. The thief whose case is being tried falls asleep.
Margaret Mead
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I've been married three times - and each time I married the right person.
Margaret Mead
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If we are to give our utmost effort and skill and enthusiasm, we must believe in ourselves, which means believing in our past and in our future, in our parents and in our children, in that particular blend of moral purpose and practical inventiveness which is the American character.
Margaret Mead
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We are at a point in history where a proper attention to space, and especially near space, may be absolutely crucial in bringing the world together.
Margaret Mead