“I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.”

— Margaret Mead

Source: 1970s, Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views (1979), p. 249

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow h…" by Margaret Mead?

Margaret Mead 133

American anthropologist 1901–1978

Related quotes

“He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Education for Independent Thought" in The New York Times, 5 October 1952. Reprinted in Ideas and Opinions (1954)
1950s
Context: It is not enough to teach a man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he—with his specialized knowledge—more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community. These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not—or at least not in the main—through textbooks. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the "humanities" as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.

“Inevitably, an individual is measured by his or her largest concerns.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Human Options (1981)

“In developing a full, deep and rich personality the individual ceases to be a mere cog or cipher, and makes his own particular contribution to evolutionary fulfilment.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)
Context: Human potentialities constitute the world's greatest resource, but at the moment only a tiny fraction of them is being realized. The possibility of tapping and directing these vast resources of human possibility provide the religion of the future with a powerful long-term motive. An equally powerful short-term motive is to ensure the fullest possible development and flowering of individual personalities. In developing a full, deep and rich personality the individual ceases to be a mere cog or cipher, and makes his own particular contribution to evolutionary fulfilment.

“the depth of a person's character is not measured by his or her physical strength, but by the depth of his or her nobility.”

Frank E. Peretti (1951) American writer

“Psychoanalysis, which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

"Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner