Maggie Davis > Maggie's Quotes

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead

“I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.”
― Margaret Mead

“Laughter is man's most distinctive emotional expression.”
― Margaret Mead

“Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.”
― Margaret Mead

“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”
― Margaret Mead

“Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals. ”
― Margaret Mead

“There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing...when we save our children, we save ourselves”
― Margaret Mead

“Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone.”
― Margaret Mead

“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”
― Margaret Mead

“I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?”
― Margaret Mead

“If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.”
― Margaret Mead

“Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For indeed that's all who ever have. ”
― Margaret Mead, The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future

“We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.”
― Margaret Mead

“It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet.”
― Margaret Mead

“A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon.

Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, “A healed femur.”

A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend.

Mead explained that where the law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest—rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.”
― Ira Byock

“My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.”
― Margaret Mead

“Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.”
― Margaret Mead

“An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift”
― Margaret Mead

“Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man. ”
― Margaret Mead

“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 gift will find a fitting place.”
― Margaret Mead

“Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship. ~Margaret Mead”
― Margaret Mead

“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

“I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.”
― Margaret Mead

“Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.”
― Margaret Mead

“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

“No society has ever yet been able to handle the temptations of technology to mastery, to waste, to exuberance, to exploration and exploitation. We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish it as something that's fragile, that's only one, it's all we have. We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.”
― Margaret Mead

“It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.”
― Margaret Mead

“We must turn all of our educational efforts to training our children for the choices which will confront them... The child who is to choose wisely must be healthy in mind and body. The children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation

“After all, we are all immigrants to the future; none of us is a native in that land. Margaret Mead famously wrote about the profound changes wrought by the Second World War, “All of us who grew up before the war are immigrants in time, immigrants from an earlier world, living in an age essentially different from anything we knew before.” Today we are again in the early stages of defining a new age. The very underpinnings of our society and institutions--from how we work to how we create value, govern, trade, learn, and innovate--are being profoundly reshaped by amplified individuals. We are indeed all migrating to a new land and should be looking at the new landscape emerging before us like immigrants: ready to learn a new language, a new way of doing things, anticipating new beginnings with a sense of excitement, if also with a bit of understandable trepidation.”
― Marina Gorbis, The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World