Top 180 Margaret Mead Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

Featured in: Leadership Quotes

2. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

— Margaret Mead

Featured in: Teacher Quotes

3. “I learned the value of hard work by working hard.”

— Margaret Mead

Featured in: Quotes About Work, Uplifting Quotes

4. “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”

— Margaret Mead

Featured in: Quotes About Laughter

5. “What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.”

— Margaret Mead

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

— Margaret Mead

7. “We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.”

— Margaret Mead

Featured in: Carpe Diem Quotes

8. “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.”

— Margaret Mead

9. “All social change comes from the passion of individuals.”

— Margaret Mead

10. “If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.”

— Margaret Mead

11. “Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

— Margaret Mead

12. “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 human gift will find a fitting place.”

— Margaret Mead

Featured in: History Quotes

13. “It is easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet.”

— Margaret Mead

14. “I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don’t agree with or like.”

— Margaret Mead

Featured in: Respect Quotes

15. “You know you love someone when you cannot put into words how they make you feel.”

— Margaret Mead

16. “You can no longer save your family, tribe or nation. You can only save the whole world.”

— Margaret Mead

17. “An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift.”

— Margaret Mead

18. “There is no more creative force in the world than the menopausal woman with zest.”

— Margaret Mead

19. “The most intractable problem today is not pollution or technology or war; but the lack of belief that the future is very much in the hands of the individual.”

— Margaret Mead

Featured in: Technology Quotes

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

— Margaret Mead

21. “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

22. “I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.”

— Margaret Mead

23. “One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.”

— Margaret Mead

24. “Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.”

— Margaret Mead

25. “Where we choose to put our attention changes our brain, which in time can change how we see and interact with the world.”

— Margaret Mead

26. “I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw.”

— Margaret Mead

27. “Home, I learned, can be anywhere you make it. Home is also the place to which you come back again and again.”

— Margaret Mead

28. “Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.”

— Margaret Mead

29. “No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.”

— Margaret Mead

30. “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

31. “We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.”

— Margaret Mead

32. “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

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

— Margaret Mead

34. “A woman, even a brilliant woman, must have two qualities in order to fulfill her promise: more energy than mere mortals, and the ability to outwit her culture.”

— Margaret Mead

35. “Never underestimate that a small group of people can hold up a liquor license. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that can.”

— Margaret Mead

36. “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

37. “What we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel. What we seldom “take” is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us.”

— Margaret Mead

38. “Sooner or later I’m going to die, but I’m not going to retire.”

— Margaret Mead

39. “War is only an invention, not a biological necessity.”

— Margaret Mead

40. “Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.”

— Margaret Mead

41. “An education not founded on Art will never succeed.”

— Margaret Mead

42. “Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.”

— Margaret Mead

43. “My grandmother wanted me to get a good education, so she kept me as far away from schools as possible.”

— Margaret Mead

44. “One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it.”

— Margaret Mead

45. “In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people’s lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world.”

— Margaret Mead

46. “Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man.”

— Margaret Mead

47. “Somehow, we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, acquire knowledge of the past, and provide a sense of the future.”

— Margaret Mead

48. “The mind is not sex-typed.”

— Margaret Mead

49. “Because our civilization is woven of so many diverse strands, the ideas which any one group accepts will be found to contain numerous contradictions.”

— Margaret Mead

50. “Of course we need children! Adults need children in their lives to listen to and care for, to keep their imagination fresh and their hearts young and to make the future a reality for which they are willing to work.”

— Margaret Mead