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We — mankind — stand at the center of an evolutionary crisis, with a new evolutionary device — our consciousness of the crisis — as our unique contribution.

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
Devices
Contribution
Center
Crisis
Unique
Mankind
Consciousness
Evolutionary
Stand
Device

More quotes by 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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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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Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.
Margaret Mead
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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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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
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Monogamous heterosexual love is probably one of the most difficult, complex and demanding of human relationships.
Margaret Mead
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Contentment can be bought at a price that one can not possibly pay.
Margaret Mead
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In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world
Margaret Mead
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The negative cautions of science are never popular.
Margaret Mead
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Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.
Margaret Mead
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My grandmother wanted me to get a good education, so she kept me as far away from schools as possible.
Margaret Mead
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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.
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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Somehow, we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, acquire knowledge of the past, and provide a sense of the future.
Margaret Mead
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Injustice experienced in the flesh, in deeply wounded flesh, is the stuff out of which change explodes.
Margaret Mead
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The first step in the direction of a world rule of law is the recognition that peace no longer is an unobtainable ideal but a necessary condition of continued human existence. But to take even this step we must return to a calm and responsible frame of mind in which we can face the long patient tasks ahead.
Margaret Mead
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If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.
Margaret Mead
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Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.
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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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