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Margaret Mead: 266 quotes28 likes

“The recurrent problem of civilization is to define the male role satisfactorily enough … so that the male may in the course of his life reach a solid sense of irreversible achievement, of which his childhood knowledge of the satisfactions of child-bearing have given him a glimpse. In the case of women, it is only necessary that they be permitted by the given social arrangements to fulfil their biological role, to attain this sense of irreversible achievement. If women are to be restless and questing, even in the face of child-bearing, they must be made so through education…. Each culture--in its own way--has developed forms that will make men satisfied in their constructive activities without distorting their sure sense of their masculinity. Fewer cultures have yet found ways in which to give women a divine discontent that will demand other satisfactions than those of child-bearing.”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 168-169, as cited in F. Carolyn Graglia (1998) Domestic Tranquility: A brief against Feminism.

“A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1970s, Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views (1979), p. 118

“As an anthropologist, I have been interested in the effects that the theories of Cybernetics have within our society. I am not referring to computers or to the electronic revolution as a whole, or to the end of dependence on script for knowledge, or to the way that dress has succeeded the mimeographing machine as a form of communication among the dissenting young. Let me repeat that, I am not referring to the way that dress has succeeded the mimeographing machine as a form of communication among the dissenting young.
I speciﬁcally want to consider the signiﬁcance of the set of cross-disciplinary ideas which we ﬁrst called “feed-back” and then called “teleological mechanisms” and then called it “cybernetics,” a form of crossdisciplinary thought which made it possible for members of many disciplines to communicate with each other easily in a language which all could understand.”

Margaret Mead

"Cybernetics of Cybernetics" in Purposive Systems : Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium American Society for Cybernetics (1967) edited by Heinz von Foerster, p. 2; also quoted in " Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/heinz/ethics.pdf" (1991) by Heinz von Foerster <br class="br">1960s

“How are men and women to think about their maleness and their femaleness in this twentieth century, in which so many of our old ideas must be made new? Have we over-domesticated men, denied their natural adventurousness, tied them down to machines that are after all only glorified spindles and looms, mortars and pestles and digging sticks, all of which were once women's work? Have we cut women off from their natural closeness to their children, taught them to look for a job instead of the touch of a child's hand, for status in a competitive world rather than a unique place by a glowing hearth? In educating women like men, have we done something disastrous to both men and women alike, or have we only taken one further step in the recurrent task of building more and better on our original human nature?”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 1; Start of first chapter entitled "The Significance of the Questions We Ask"

“No skill, no special aptitude, no vividness of imagination or precision of thinking would go unrecognized because the child who possessed it was of one sex rather than the other. No child would be relentlessly shaped to one pattern of behavior, but instead there should be many patterns, in a world that had learned to allow to each individual the pattern which was most congenial to his gifts.”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 321

“[In Western Samoa] native theory and vocabulary recognized the real pervert who was incapable of normal heterosexual response.”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 147-148

“To cherish the life of the world.”

Margaret Mead

Epitaph, as quoted in Margaret Mead : A Voice for the Century‎ (1982) by Robert Cassidy, p. 152
1980s

“p. 14-15 as cited in: Theodore Schwartz (1979) Socialization As Cultural Communication.”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1970s, Culture and commitment, 1970, p. 14-15

“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

Source: 1940s, And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (1942), p. 234—235; cited in Portraits Of Industry (2004) by Lorie A. Annarella, p. 5

“Everything is grist for anthropology's mill.”

Margaret Mead

As quoted in Margaret Mead: A Life (1984) by Jane Howard, Ch. 21, p. 319
1980s

“Our young people are faced by a series of different groups which believe different things and advocate different practices, and to each of which some trusted friend or relative may belong. So a girl's father may be a Presbyterian, an imperialist, a vegetarian, a teetotaller, with a strong literary preference for Edmund Burke, a believer in the open shop and a high tariff, who believes that women's place is in the home, that young girls should wear corsets, not roll their stockings, not smoke, nor go riding with young men in the evening. But her mother's father may be a Low Episcopalian, a believer in high living, a strong advocate of States' Rights and the Monroe Doctrine, who reads Rabelais, likes to go to musical shows and horse races…”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1920s, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), p. 161

“We women are doing pretty well. We're almost back to where we were in the twenties.”

Margaret Mead

1976
As quoted in Margaret Mead: A Life (1984) by Jane Howard, p. 362
1970s

“The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.”

Margaret Mead

Attributed in Educational Psychology (2000) by Anita E. Woolfolk, p. 212
2000s

“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

Radio excerpt presented by Voice of America (17 January 2010) http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/margaret-mead-1901-1978-one-of-the-most-famous-anthropologists-in-the-world-124869344/112571.html <br class="br">2000s

“Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law.”

Margaret Mead

Attributed inBright Words for Dark Days: Meditations for Women Who Get the Blues (1994) by Caroline Adams Miller, p. 10
1990s

“The ability to learn is older — as it is also more widespread — than is the ability to teach.”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. 44

“A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.”

Margaret Mead

Attributed in The New Quotable Woman (1993) by Elaine Partnow, p. 331
1990s

“I think extreme heterosexuality is a perversion.”

Margaret Mead

Attributed in Open Minds: Exploring Global Issues Through Reading and Discussion (1996) by Steven Widdows and Peter Voller, p. 69
1990s

“[Mead saw at least two major problems in dating. First, it encourages men and women to define heterosexual relationships as situational, rather than ongoing] You "have a date," you "go out with a date," you "groan because there isn't a decent date in town." A situation defined as containing a girl — or boy — of the right social background, the right degree of popularity, a little higher than your own.”

Margaret Mead

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 286, with bracket text from: Mary Ann Lamanna, Agnes Czerwinski Riedmann, Agnes Riedmann [2006] Marriages & Families: Making Choices and Facing Change. p. 191

“I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples — faraway peoples — so that Americans might better understand themselves.”

Margaret Mead

Cited in: Justin Wintle (2002) Makers of Modern Culture. Vol. 1, p. 350
1970s, Blackberry Winter, 1972