Margaret Mead

Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.

I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw

The suffering of either sex - of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult - this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change.

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.

I was a child that both my parents wanted. I was told from the time I was born that I was totally satisfactory. I had a chance to be what I wanted to be.

Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them.

Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world.

Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.

We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of the country.

Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.

Blackberry winter, the time when the hoarforst lies on the blackberry blossoms; without this frost the berries will not set. It is the forerunner of a rich harvest.

Ninety-nine percent of the time humans have lived on this planet we've lived in tribes, groups of 12 to 36 people. Only during times of war, or what we have now, which is the psychological equivalent of war, does the nuclear family prevail, because it's the most mobile unit that can ensure the survival of the species. But for the full flowering of the human spirit we need groups, tribes.

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

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.

Mothers are a biological necessity; fathers are a social invention

All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

And as I had my father's kind of mind-which was also his mother's-I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.

What is new is not bisexuality, but rather the widening of our awareness and acceptance of human capacities for sexual love.

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

It has been a woman's task throughout history to go on believing in life when there was almost no hope.

The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.