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

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

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

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.
Margaret Mead

Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.
Margaret Mead

Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.
Margaret Mead

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.
Margaret Mead

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

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation.
Margaret Mead

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
Margaret Mead

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.
Margaret Mead

Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
Margaret Mead

Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.
Margaret Mead

Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire.
Margaret Mead

Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.
Margaret Mead

The pains of childbirth were altogether different from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain. These were pains one could follow with one's mind.
Margaret Mead

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

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

We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.
Margaret Mead

We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.
Margaret Mead