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Both Men And Women Are Conceived As Merely Capable Of Response To A Situation That Their Society Has Already Defined For Them As Sexual, And So The Arapesh Feel That It Is Necessary To Chaperon Betrothed Couples Who Are Too Young... With Their Definition Of Sex As A Response To An External Situation Rather Than As Spontaneous Desire, Both Men And Women Are Regarded As Helpless In The Face Of Seduction. Parents Warn Their Sons Even More Than They Warn Their Daughters Against Permitting Themselves To Get Into Situations In Which Someone Can Make Love To Them.

-Margaret Mead

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Both Men And Women

Margaret Mead

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Both Men And Women Are Conceived As Merely Capable Of Response To A Situation That Their Society Has Already Defined For Them As Sexual, And So The Arapesh Feel That It Is Necessary To Chaperon Betrothed Couples Who Are Too Young... With Their Definition Of Sex As A Response To An External Situation Rather Than As Spontaneous Desire, Both Men And Women Are Regarded As Helpless In The Face Of Seduction. Parents Warn Their Sons Even More Than They Warn Their Daughters Against Permitting Themselves To Get Into Situations In Which Someone Can Make Love To Them.

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There Are Now No Elders Who Know More Than The Young Themselves About What The Young Are Experiencing.

Both Men And Women Are Conceived As Merely Capable Of Response To A Situation That Their Society Has Already Defined For Them As Sexual, And So The Arapesh Feel That It Is Necessary To Chaperon Betrothed Couples Who Are Too Young... With Their Definition Of Sex As A Response To An External Situation Rather Than As Spontaneous Desire, Both Men And Women Are Regarded As Helpless In The Face Of Seduction. Parents Warn Their Sons Even More Than They Warn Their Daughters Against Permitting Themselves To Get Into Situations In Which Someone Can Make Love To Them.

Humanity . . . Lies In Man's Capacity To Question The Known And Imagine The Unknown.

No One Will Live All His Life In The World Into Which He Was Born And No One Will Die In The World In Which He Worked In His Maturity.

Women Have An Important Contribution To Make.

Important Contributions

Parents Feel Like Immigrants In The Country Of The Young.

Sometimes, Instead Of Helping People To Advance, A Discovery Or An Invention Holds Them Back.

The Mind Is Not Sex-typed.

For Immanuel Kant, The Term Anthropology Embraced All The Human Sciences, And Laid The Foundation Of Familiar Knowledge We Need, To Build Solidly Grounded Ideas About The Moral And Political Demands Of Human Life. Margaret Mead Saw Mid-twentieth-century Anthropology As Engaged In A Project No Less Ambitious Than Kant's Own, And Her Terry Lectures On Continuities In Cultural Evolution Provide An Excellent Point To Enter Into Her Reflections.

Be Who You Really Are, Do What You Want To Do, In Order To Have What You Really Want.

I Did Not Write It [coming Of Age In Samoa] As A Popular Book, But Only With The Hope That It Would Be Intelligible To Those Who Might Make The Best Use Of Its Theme, That Adolescence Need Not Be The Time Of Stress And Strain Which Western Society Made It; That Growing Up Could Be Freer And Easier And Less Complicated; And Also That There Were Prices To Pay For The Very Lack Of Complication I Found In Samoa - Less Intensity, Less Individuality, Less Involvement With Life.

I Suddenly Realized That Through No Act Of My Own I Had Become Biologically Related To A New Human Being.

In This Country, Some People Start Being Miserable About Growing Old While They Are Still Young.

Mead's Anthropology Had Many Other Red, White And Blue- Blooded Virtues. One Was The Common Anthropological Conceit, Out Of Which She Made A Career, To The Effect That The Ultimate Value Of Studying Other Cultures Was The Use We Could Make Of Them To Reconstruct Our Own - A Heady Kind Of Intellectual Imperialism, As If The Final Meaning Of Others' Lives Was Their Significance For Us.

No Matter How Free Divorce, How Frequently Marriages Break Up, In Most Societies There Is The Assumption Of Permanent Mating, Of The Idea That The Marriage Should Last As Long As Both Live. . . . No Known Society Has Ever Invented A Form Of Marriage Strong Enough To Stick That Did Not Contain The 'till Death Us Do Part' Assumption.

It Was Not Until We Saw The Picture Of The Earth, From The Moon, That We Realized How Small And How Helpless This Planet Is - Something That We Must Hold In Our Arms And Care For.

The United States Has The Power To Destroy The World, But Not The Power To Save It Alone

Man's Role Is Uncertain, Undefined, And Perhaps Unnecessary.

Learned Behaviors Have Replaced The Biologically Given Ones.

Learned Behavior

The Liberals Have Not Softened Their View Of Actuality To Make Themselves Live Closer To The Dream, But Instead Sharpen Their Perceptions And Fight To Make The Dream Actuality.

No Country That Permits Firearms To Be Widely And Randomly Distributed Among Its Population - Especially Firearms That Are Capable Of Wounding And Killing Human Beings - Can Expect To Escape Violence, And A Great Deal Of Violence.

If The Future Is To Remain Open And Free, We Need People Who Can Tolerate The Unknown, Who Will Not Need The Support Of Completely Worked Out Systems Or Traditional Blueprints From The Past.

The Semimetaphysical Problems Of The Individual And Society, Of Egoism And Altruism, Of Freedom And Determinism, Either Disappear Or Remain In The Form Of Different Phases In The Organization Of A Consciousness That Is Fundamentally Social.

With The Exception Of The Few Cases To Be Discussed In The Next Chapter, Adolescence Represented No Period Of Crisis Or Stress, But Was Instead An Orderly Developing Of A Set Of Slowly Maturing Interests And Activities.

Orientation In Time, Space, And Status Are The Essentials Of Social Existence, And The Balinese, Although They Make Very Strong Spirits For Ceremonial Occasions, With A Few Startling Exceptions Resist Alcohol, Because If One Drinks One Loses One's Orientation. Orientation Is Felt As A Protection Rather Than As A Strait Jacket And Its Loss Provokes Extreme Anxiety.

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.

Photographs [are] Of Course Heavily Dependent Upon The Culture, The Disciplinary Point Of View And The Idiosyncratic Vision Of The Particular Photographer-analyst.

Those Social Behaviors Which Automatically Preclude The Building Of A Democratic World Must Go - Every Social Limitation Of Human Beings In Terms Of Heredity, Whether It Be Of Race, Or Sex, Or Class. Every Social Institution Which Teaches Human Beings To Cringe To Those Above And Step On Those Below Must Be Replaced By Institutions Which Teach People To Look Each Other Straight In The Face.

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.

If Sports Are The Toy Department Of Life, Then The Nfl Is The Fao Schwartz Of Sports.

Warfare ... Is Just An Invention, Older And More Widespread Than The Jury System, But None The Less An Invention.

If They Learn Easily, They Are Penalized For Being Bored When They Have Nothing To Do; If They Excel In Some Outstanding Way, They Are Penalized As Being Conspicuously Better Than The Peer Group. The Culture Tries To Make The Child With A Gift Into A One-sided Person, To Penalize Him At Every Turn, To Cause Him Trouble In Making Friends And To Create Conditions Conducive To The Development Of A Neurosis. Neither Teachers, The Parents Of Other Children, Nor The Child Peers Will Tolerate A Wunderkind.

Leisure And The Cultivation Of Human Capacities Are Inextricably Interdependent.

Between Friends There Is No Bribery. ... The Relationship Of Friends Is Intrinsically Fair And Equal. Neither Feels Stronger Or More Clever Or More Beautiful Than The Other.

Britons Put Up With, Americans Fix, Canadians Cope

Women Should Be Permitted To Volunteer For Non-combat Service... We Have No Real Way Of Knowing Whether The Kinds Of Training That Teach Men Both Courage And Restraint Would Be Adaptable To Women Or Effective In A Crisis. But The Evidence Of History And Comparative Studies Of Other Species Suggest That Women As A Fighting Body Might Be Far Less Amenable To The Rules That Prevent War From Becoming A Massacre And, With The Use Of Modern Weapons, That Protect The Survival Of All Humanity. That Is What I Meant By Saying That Women In Combat Might Be Too Fierce.

I Used To Say To My Classes That The Ways To Get Insight Are: To Study Infants; To Study Animals; To Study Primitive People; To Be Psychoanalyzed; To Have A Religious Conversion And Get Over It; To Have A Psychotic Episode And Get Over It; Or To Have A Love Affair With An Old Russian. And I Stopped Saying That When A Little Dancer In The Front Row Put Up Her Hand And Said, 'does He Have To Be Old?

We Came To Realize That A Civilization Which Rode Roughshod Over The Way Of Life Of Other Peoples Was Incorporating Evil In Its Own Way Of Life.

Injustice Experienced In The Flesh, In Deeply Wounded Flesh, Is The Stuff Out Of Which Change Explodes.

Many Societies Have Educated Their Male Children On The Simple Device Of Teaching Them Not To Be Women.

What People Say, What People Do, And What They Say They Do Are Entirely Different Things.

We Have Nowhere Else To Go... This Is All We Have.

In All Cultures, Human Beings - In Order To Be Human - Must Understand The Nonhuman.

Through A Grandmother's Voice And Hands The End Of Life Is Known At The Beginning.

The Need To Find Meaning...is As Real As The Need For Trust And For Love, For Relations With Other Human Beings.

I Must Admit That I Personally Measure Success In Terms Of The Contributions An Individual Makes To Her Or His Fellow Human Beings.

Congratulations

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.

[among The Arapeh... Both Father And Mother Are Held Responsible For Child Care By The Entire Community...] If One Comments Upon A Middle-aged Man As Good-looking, The People Answer: 'good-looking? Ye-e-e-s? But You Should Have Seen Him Before He Bore All Those Children'.

We End Up With The Contradictory Picture Of A Society That Appears To Throw Its Doors Wide Open To Women, But Translates Her Every Step Towards Success As Having Been Damaging.

We Must Bear In Mind The Possibility That The Greater Opportunities Open In The Twentieth Century To Women May Be Quite Withdrawn, And That We May Return To Stricter Regimentation Of Women.

The Negative Cautions Of Science Are Never Popular.

Life Is In One Of Its Smoother Phases ... I've No Responsibilities In The World Except Friends And Students And Cherishing The Life Of The World -- And The Belief That There Is Enough Love To Go Round.

Our Treatment Of Both Older People And Children Reflects The Value We Place On Independence And Autonomy. We Do Our Best To Make Our Children Independent From Birth. We Leave Them All Alone In Rooms With The Lights Out And Tell Them, 'go To Sleep By Yourselves.' And The Old People We Respect Most Are The Ones Who Will Fight For Their Independence, Who Would Sooner Starve To Death Than Ask For Help.

We — Mankind — Stand At The Center Of An Evolutionary Crisis, With A New Evolutionary Device — Our Consciousness Of The Crisis — As Our Unique Contribution.

I Approached The Idea Of College With The Expectation Of Taking Part In An Intellectual Feast. ... In College, In Some Way That I Devoutly Believed In But Could Not Explain, I Expected To Become A Person.

The Way In Which Each Human Infant Is Transformed Into The Finished Adult, Into The Complicated Individual Version Of His City And His Century Is One Of The Most Fascinating Studies Open To The Curious Minded.

Coming To Terms With The Rhythms Of Women's Lives Means Coming To Terms With Life Itself, Accepting The Imperatives Of The Body Rather Than The Imperatives Of An Artificial, Man-made, Perhaps Transcendentally Beautiful Civilization. Emphasis On The Male Work-rhythm Is An Emphasis On Infinite Possibilities; Emphasis On The Female Rhythms Is An Emphasis On A Defined Pattern, On Limitation.

Human Beings Do Not Carry Civilization In Their Genes. All That We Do Carry In Our Genes Are Certain Capacities- The Capacity To Learn To Walk Upright, To Use Our Brains, To Speak, To Relate To Our Fellow Men, To Construct And Use Tools, To Explore The Universe, And To Express That Exploration In Religion, In Art, In Science, In Philosophy.

In Every Human Society Of Which We Have Any Record, There Are Those Who Teach And Those Who Learn, For Learning A Way Of Life Is Implicit In All Human Culture As We Know It. But The Separation Of The Teacher's Role From The Role Of All Adults Who Inducted The Young Into The Habitual Behavior Of The Group, Was A Comparatively Late Invention. Furthermore, When We Do Find Explicit And Defined Teaching, In Primitive Societies We Find It Tied In With A Sense Of The Rareness Or The Precariousness Of Some Human Tradition.

Even Very Recently, The Elders Could Say: 'you Know, I Have Been Young And You Never Have Been Old.' But Today's Young People Can Reply: 'you Never Have Been Young In The World I Am Young In, And You Never Can Be.' ... The Older Generation Will Never See Repeated In The Lives Of Young People Their Own Unprecedented Experience Of Sequentially Emerging Change. This Break Between Generations Is Wholly New: It Is Planetary And Universal.

The Prophet Who Fails To Present A Bearable Alternative And Yet Preaches Doom Is Part Of The Trap That He Postulates. Not Only Does He Picture Us Caught In A Tremendous Man-made Or God-made Trap From Which There Is No Escape, But We Must Also Listen To Him Day In, Day Out, Describe How The Trap Is Inexorably Closing. To Such Prophecies The Human Race, As Presently Bred And Educated And Situated, Is Incapable Of Listening. So Some Dance And Some Immolate Themselves As Human Torches; Some Take Drugs And Some Artists Spill Their Creativity In Sets Of Randomly Placed Dots On A White Ground.

I Learned The Value Of Hard Work By Working Hard.

Each Home Has Been Reduced To The Bare Essentials -- To Barer Essentials Than Most Primitive People Would Consider Possible. Only One Woman's Hands To Feed The Baby, Answer The Telephone, Turn Off The Gas Under The Pot That Is Boiling Over, Soothe The Older Child Who Has Broken A Toy, And Open Both Doors At Once. She Is A Nutritionist, A Child Psychologist, An Engineer, A Production Manager, An Expert Buyer, All In One. Her Husband Sees Her As Free To Plan Her Own Time, And Envies Her; She Sees Him As Having Regular Hours And Envies Him.

Contentment Can Be Bought At A Price That One Can Not Possibly Pay.

The Prophet Who Fails To Present A Bearable Alternative And Yet Preaches Doom Is Part Of The Trap That He Postulates.

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.

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

It Used To Be When We Said, ''til Death Do Us Part,' Death Parted Us Pretty Soon. That's Why Marriages Used To Last Forever. Everybody Was Dead.

...recognize And Respect Earth's Beautiful Systems Of Balance, Between The Presence Of Animals On Land, The Fish In The Sea, Birds In The Air, Mankind, Water, Air, And Land. Most Importantly There Must Always Be Awareness Of The Actions By People That Can Disturb This Precious Balance.

Many People Are Shrinking From The Future And From Participation In The Movement Toward A New, Expanded Reality. And, Like Homesick Travelers Abroad, They Are Focusing Their Anxieties On Home. The Reasons Are Not Far To Seek. We Are At A Turning Point In Human History. . . . We Could Turn Our Attention To The Problems That Going To The Moon Certainly Will Not Solve ... But I Think This Would Be Fatal To Our Future. . . . A Society That No Longer Moves Forward Does Not Merely Stagnate; It Begins To Die.

If I Were To Be Taken Hostage, I Would Not Plead For Release Nor Would I Want My Government To Be Blackmailed. I Think Certain Government Officials, Industrialists And Celebrated Persons Should Make It Clear They Are Prepared To Be Sacrificed If Taken Hostage. If That Were Done, What Gain Would There Be For Terrorists In Taking Hostages?

I Have A Respect For Manners As Such, They Are A Way Of Dealing With People You Don't Agree With Or Like.

If One Cannot State A Matter Clearly Enough So That Even An Intelligent Twelve-year-old Can Understand It, One Should Remain Within The Cloistered Walls Of The University And Laboratory Until One Gets A Better Grasp Of One's Subject Matter.

Grandparents Are Given A Second Chance To Enjoy Parenthood With Fewer Of Its Tribulations And Anxieties.

In Contrast To Our Own Social Environment Which Brings Out Different Aspects Of Human Nature And Often Demonstrated That Behavior Which Occurs Almost Invariably In Individuals Within Our Society Is Nevertheless Due Not To Original Nature But To Social Environment; And A Homogeneous And Simple Development Of The Individual May Be Studied.

Maleness In America Is Not Absolutely Defined; It Has To Be Kept And Re-earned Every Day, And One Essential Element In The Definition Is Beating Women In Every Game That Both Sexes Play.

You Just Have To Learn Not To Care About The Dusty Mites Under The Beds.

Where Families Suffer From Disasters That Are Preventable, This Is A Measure Of A Whole Nation's Neglect. A Society Imperils Its Own Future When, Out Of Negligence Or Contempt, It Overlooks The Need Of Children To Be Reared In A Family ... Or When, In The Midst Of Plenty, Some Families Cannot Give Their Children Adequate Food And Shelter, Safe Activity And Rest, And An Opportunity To Grow Into Full Adulthood As People Who Can Care For And Cherish Other Human Beings Like Themselves.

The Institution Of Marriage In All Societies Is A Pattern Within Which The Strains Put By Civilization On Males And Females Alike Must Be Resolved, A Pattern Within Which Men Must Learn, In Return For A Variety Of Elaborate Rewards, New Forms In Which Sexual Spontaneity Is Still Possible, And Women Must Learn To Discipline Their Receptivity To A Thousand Other Considerations.

Keeping Even The Most Humble Talent Wrapped In A Napkin Becomes The More Reprehensible The Greater The Emergency.

Human Beings Seem To Hold On More Tenaciously To A Cultural Identity That Is Learned Through Suffering Than To One That Has Been Acquired Through Pleasure And Delight.

Never Doubt That A Small Group Of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens Can Change The World; Indeed, It's The Only Thing That Ever Has.

We Make Our Own Criminals, And Their Crimes Are Congruent With The National Culture We All Share. It Has Been Said That A People Get The Kind Of Political Leadership They Deserve. I Think They Also Get The Kinds Of Crime And Criminals They Themselves Bring Into Being.

It Is Typical, In America, That A Person's Hometown Is Not The Place Where He Is Living Now But Is The Place He Left Behind.

I Was Brought Up To Believe That The Only Thing Worth Doing Was To Add To The Sum Of Accurate Information In The World.

There Is No Greater Insight Into The Future Than Recognizing...when We Save Our Children, We Save Ourselves

Fathers Are Biological Necessities, But Social Accidents.

From A Hundred Cultures, [there Is] One Culture Which Does What No Culture Has Ever Done Before-gives A Place To Every Human Gift.

Creationism: The Theory That Rome Was Built In A Day.

I Had My Father's Mind, But He Had His Mother's Mind. Fortunately, His Mother Lived With Us And So I Early Realized That Intellectual Abilities Of The Kind I Shared With My Father And Grandmother Were Not Sex-linked.

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.

The Assumption That Men And Woman Are Essentially Alike In All Respects, Or Even In The Most Important Ones, Is A Damaging One, As Damaging As The Assumption That They Are Different In Ways In Which They Aren't Different, Perhaps More So.

Today Our Approaches To Children Are Fragmented And Partial. Those Who Care For Well Children Know Little Of Children Who Are Sick. The Deep Knowledge That Comes From The Intensive Attempt To Cure Is Separated From The Knowledge Of Those Whose Main Task Is To Teach.

I Was Wise Enough To Never Grow Up While Fooling Most People Into Believing I Had.

Because Of Their Age Long Training In Human Relations For That Is What Feminine Intuition Really Is Women Have A Special Contribution To Make Any Group Enterprise.

Samoa Culture Demonstrates How Much The Tragic Or The Easy Solution Of The Oedipus Situation Depends Upon The Inter-relationship Between Parents And Children, And Is Not Created Out Of Whole Cloth By The Young Child's Biological Impulses.

I Have Spent Most Of My Life Studying The Lives Of Other Peoples - Faraway Peoples - So That Americans Might Better Understand Themselves.

Lives Of Others

In Almost Any Society I Think, The Quality Of The Nonconformists Is Likely To Be Just As Good As And No Better Than That Of The Conformists.

Our Humanity Rests Upon A Series Of Learned Behaviors, Woven Together Into Patterns That Are Infinitely Fragile And Never Directly Inherited.

People Are Still Encouraged To Marry As If They Could Count On Marriage Being For Life, And At The Same Time They Are Absorbing A Knowledge Of The Great Frequency Of Divorce.

[in Bali] Life Is A Rhythmic, Patterned Unreality Of Pleasant, Significant Movement, Centered In One's Own Body To Which All Emotions Long Ago Withdrew.

Where We Choose To Put Our Attention Changes Our Brain, Which In Time Can Change How We See And Interact With The World.

It Has Been A Woman's Task Throughout History To Go On Believing In Life When There Was Almost No Hope.

What Is New Is Not Bisexuality, But Rather The Widening Of Our Awareness And Acceptance Of Human Capacities For Sexual Love.

The Time Has Come, I Think, When We Must Recognize Bisexuality As A Normal Form Of Human Behavior.

Every Time We Liberate A Woman, We Liberate A Man.

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.

Instead Of Needing Lots Of Children, We Need High-quality Children.

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.

Wonder Is Very Important, Because If We Never Wondered, We Would Never Get To The Point Of Asking Questions. Yet Wonder May Lead People To Write Poetry Or To Paint Pictures Or To Pray, As Well As To Ask The Kinds Of Questions About The World And Themselves That Can Be Answered By Science.

Asking Questions

An Education Not Founded On Art Will Never Succeed.

The Closest Friends I Made All Through Life Have Been People Who Also Grew Up Close To A Loved And Loving Grandmother Or Grandfather.

There Is No Greater Power In The World Than The Zest Of A Postmenopausal Woman.

To Demand That Another Love What One Loves Is Tyranny Enough, But To Demand That Another Hate What One Hates, Is Even Worse.

We May Say That Many, If Not All, Of The Personality Traits Which We Have Called Masculine Or Feminine Are As Lightly Linked To Sex As Are The Clothing, The Manners, And The Form Of Headdress That A Society At A Given Period Assigns To Either Sex.

Masculine And Feminine

Motherhood Is A Biological Fact, While Fatherhood Is A Social Invention.

We Women Are Doing Pretty Well. We're Almost Back To Where We Were In The Twenties.

We Are At A Point In History Where A Proper Attention To Space, And Especially Near Space, May Be Absolutely Crucial In Bringing The World Together.

One Of The Most Dangerous Things That Can Happen To A Child Is To Kill Or Torture An Animal And Get Away With It.

The Time Has Come, I Think, When We Must Recognize Bisexuality As A Normal Form Of Human Behavior... We Shall Not Really Succeed In Discarding The Straitjacket Of Our Cultural Beliefs About Sexual Choice If We Fail To Come To Terms With The Well-documented, Normal Human Capacity To Love Members Of Both Sexes.

Capacity To Love

Each Suburban Housewife Spends Her Time Presiding Over A Power Plant Sufficient To Have Staffed The Palace Of A Roman Emperor With A Hundred Slaves.

Sooner Or Later I'm Going To Die, But I'm Not Going To Retire.

Sooner Or Later

The Contempt For Law And The Contempt For The Human Consequences Of Lawbreaking Go From The Bottom To The Top Of American Society.

Whatever Advantages May Have Arisen, In The Past, Out Of The Existence Of A Specially Favored And Highly Privileged Aristocracy, It Is Clear To Me That Today No Argument Can Stand That Supports Unequal Opportunity Or Any Intrinsic Disqualification For Sharing In The Whole Of Life.

I Have Been Accused Of Having Believed When I Wrote Sex And Temperament That There Are No Sex Differences... This, Many Readers Felt, Was Too Much. It Was Too Pretty. I Must Have Found What I Was Looking For. But This Misconception Comes From A Lack Of Understanding Of What Anthropology Means, Of 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.

The Way To Do Fieldwork Is Never To Come Up For Air Until It Is All Over.

All Social Change Comes From The Passion Of Individuals.

Mourning Has Become Unfashionable In The United States. The Bereaved Are Supposed To Pull Themselves Together As Quickly As Possible And To Reweave The Torn Fabric Of Life. ... We Do Not Allow ... For The Weeks And Months During Which A Loss Is Realized - A Beautiful Word That Suggests The Transmutation Of The Strange Into Something That Is One's Own.

Love Is The Invention Of A Few High Cultures ... It Is Cultural Artifact. To Make Love The Requirement Of A Lifelong Marriage Is Exceedingly Difficult, And Only A Few People Can Achieve It. I Don't Believe In Setting Universal Standards That A Large Proportion Of People Can't Reach.

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.

We Grow Up Never Questioning That Which Is Unquestioned Around Us.

Sisters, While They Are Growing Up, Tend To Be Very Rivalrous And As Young Mothers They Are Given To Continual Rivalrous Comparisons Of Their Several Children. But Once The Children Grow Older, Sisters Draw Closer Together And Often, In Old Age, They Become Each Other's Chosen And Most Happy Companions. In Addition To Their Shared Memories Of Childhood And Of Their Relationship To Each Other's Children, They Share Memories Of The Same Home, The Same Homemaking Style, And The Same Small Prejudices About Housekeeping That Carry The Echoes Of Their Mother's Voice.

Loving You Is Just Like Breathing, As Effortless, And As Lovely.

The Important Thing About Women Today Is, As They Get Older, They Still Keep House. It's One Reason Why They Don't Die, But Men Die When They Retire. Women Just Polish The Teacups.

To The Extent That Either Sex Is Disadvantaged, The Whole Culture Is Poorer, And The Sex That, Superficially, Inherits The Earth, Inherits Only A Very Partial Legacy. The More Whole The Culture, The More Whole Each Member, Each Man, Each Woman, Each Child Will Be.

Dear Math, Please Grow Up And Solve Your Own Problems. I'm Tired Of Solving Them For You. Always Remember That You Are Absolutely Unique. Just Like Everyone Else.

Dancing Is The Only Activity In Which Almost All Ages And Both Sexes Participate.

Cynicism Is The Other Thing That Goes With Sentimentality.

Never Believe That A Few Caring People Can't Change The World. For, Indeed, That's All Who Ever Have.

Today's Children Are The First Generation To Grow Up In A World That Has The Power To Destroy Itself.

Pigs And Cows And Chickens And People Are All Competing For Grain.

Once Any Group In Society Stands In A Relatively Deprived Position In Relation To Other Groups, It Is Genuinely Deprived.

Earth Day Is The First Holy Day Which Transcends All National Borders, Yet Preserves All Geographical Integrities, Spans Mountains And Oceans And Time Belts, And Yet Brings People All Over The World Into One Resonating Accord, Is Devoted To The Preservation Of The Harmony In Nature And Yet Draws Upon The Triumphs Of Technology, The Measurement Of Time, And Instantaneous Communication Through Space.

A Small Group Of Thoughtful People Could Change The World.

The First Step In The Direction Of A World Rule Of Law Is The Recognition That Peace No Longer Is An Unobtainable Ideal But A Necessary Condition Of Continued Human Existence. But To Take Even This Step We Must Return To A Calm And Responsible Frame Of Mind In Which We Can Face The Long Patient Tasks Ahead.

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.

The Ability To Learn Is Older As It Is Also More Widespread Than Is The Ability To Teach.

For The Very First Time The Young Are Seeing History Being Made Before It Is Censored By Their Elders.

No Society That Feeds Its Children On Tales Of Successful Violence Can Expect Them Not To Believe That Violence In The End Is Rewarded.

Much Of The Ill-tempered Railing Against Women That Has Characterized The Popular Writing Of The Last Two Years Is A Half-heartedattempt To Find A Way Back To A More Balanced Relationship Between Our Biological Selves And The World We Have Built. So Women Are Scolded Both For Being Mothers And For Not Being Mothers, For Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too, And For Not Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too.

We Must Devise A System In Which Peace Is More Rewarding Than War.

The Older Child Who Has Lost Or Broken Some Valuable Thing Will Be Found When His Parents Return, Not Run Away, Not Willing To Confess, But In A Deep Sleep. The Thief Whose Case Is Being Tried Falls Asleep.

I Am Interested In What Happens To People Who Find The Whole Of Life So Rewarding That They Are Able To Move Through It With The Same Kind Of Delight In Which A Child Moves Through A Game.

Earth Day Reminds The People Of The World Of The Need For Continuing Care Which Is Vital To Earth's Safety.

We Must Recognize That Beneath The Superficial Classifications Of Sex And Race The Same Potentialities Exist, Recurring Generation After Generation, Only To Perish Because Society Has No Place For Them.

The Anonymity Of The City Is One Of Its Strengths As Well As - Carried Too Far - One Of Its Weaknesses.

To The Extent A Person Makes, Invents Or Thinks Something That Is New To Him, He May Be Said To Have Performed A Creative Act.

The Negative Cautions Of Science Are Never Popular. If The Experimentalist Would Not Commit Himself, The Social Philosopher, The Preacher, And The Pedagogue Tried The Harder To Give A Short-cut Answer.

The Protection Of A Ten-year-old Girl From Her Father's Advances Is A Necessary Condition Of Social Order, But The Protection Of The Father From Temptation Is A Necessary Condition Of His Continued Social Adjustment. The Protections That Are Built Up In The Child Against Desire For The Parent Become The Essential Counterpart To The Attitudes In The Parent That Protect The Child.

The Differences Between The Two Sexes Is One Of The Important Conditions Upon Which We Have Built The Many Varieties Of Human Culture That Give Human Beings Dignity And Stature.

I Have Tried To Answer The Question Which Sent Me To Samoa: Are The Disturbances Which Vex Our Adolescents Due To The Nature Of Adolescence Itself Or To The Civilization? Under Different Conditions Does Adolescence Present A Different Picture?

If Man Has Not Found Ways To Deal With Environmental Problems Such As Water And Air Pollution By 1998, It Will Be Too Late. The Future Is Not Determined And It Lies In Our Own Hands.

There Is No More Creative Force In The World Than The Menopausal Woman With Zest.

People In America, Of Course, Live In All Sorts Of Fashions, Because They Are Foreigners, Or Unlucky, Or Depraved, Or Without Ambition; People Live Like That, But Americans Live In White Detached Houses With Green Shutters. Rigidly, Blindly, The Dream Takes Precedence.

Everybody's Suffering Is Mine But Not Everybody's Murdering ... I Do Not Distinguish For One Moment Whether My Child Is In Danger Or A Child In Central Asia. But I Will Not Accept Responsibility For What Other People Do Because I Happen To Belong To That Nation Or That Race Or That Religion. I Do Not Believe In Guilt By Association.

I Think Rigid Heterosexuality Is A Perversion Of Nature.

Heterosexuality Is

Heterosexuality

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.

One Characteristic Of Americans Is That They Have No Toleration At All Of Anybody Putting Up With Anything. We Believe That Whatever Is Going Wrong Ought To Be Fixed.

Characteristics

Our Human Situation No Longer Permits Us To Make Armed Dichotomies Between Those Who Are Good And Those Who Are Evil, Those Who Are Right And Those Who Are Wrong. The First Blow Dealt To The Enemy's Children Will Sign The Death Warrant Of Our Own.

There Is No Lonelier Person Than The One Who Lives With A Spouse With Whom He Or She Cannot Communicate.

Women Are Scolded Both For Being Mothers And For Not Being Mothers, For Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too, And For Not Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too.

I Learned To Observe The World Around Me, And To Note What I Saw

Young People Are Moving Away From Feeling Guilty About Sleeping With Somebody To Feeling Guilty If They Are *not* Sleeping With Someone.

Never Ever Depend On Governments Or Institutions To Solve Any Major Problems. All Social Change Comes From The Passion Of Individuals.

Having Two Bathrooms Ruined The Capacity To Co-operate.

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.

What Are The Determinative Factors In The Early Training Of The Child Which Assures That It Will Be Placid And Contented, Unaggressive And Non-initiatory, Non-competitive And Responsive, Warm, Docile, And Trusting?

You Can No Longer Save Your Family, Tribe Or Nation. You Can Only Save The Whole World.

No Matter How Many Communes Anybody Invents, The Family Always Creeps Back.

Margaret Mead Was Both A Student Of Civilization And An Exemplar Of It. To A Public Of Millions, She Brought The Central Insight Of Cultural Anthropology: That Varying Cultural Patterns Express An Underlying Human Unity. She Mastered Her Discipline, But She Also Transcended It. Intrepid, Independent, Plain Spoken, Fearless, She Remains A Model For The Young And A Teacher From Whom All May Learn.

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.

There Is No Evidence That Suggests Women Are Naturally Better At Caring For Children... With The Fact Of Child-bearing Out Of The Centre Of Attention, There Is Even More Reason For Treating Girls First As Human Beings, Then As Women.

It May Be Necessary Temporarily To Accept A Lesser Evil, But One Must Never Label A Necessary Evil As Good.

Standardized Personality Differences Between The Sexes Are Of This Order, Cultural Creations To Which Each Generation, Male And Female, Is Trained To Conform.

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.

Human Nature Is Potentially Aggressive And Destructive And Potentially Orderly And Constructive.

An Ideal Culture Is One That Makes A Place For Every Human Gift

This Is A Precious Possession Which We Cannot Afford To Tarnish, But Society Always Is Attempting To Make The Physician Into A Killer To Kill The Defective Child At Birth, To Leave The Sleeping Pills Beside The Bed Of The Cancer Patient ... It Is The Duty Of Society To Protect The Physicians From Such Requests.

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.

In The Presence Of Grandparent And Grandchild, Past And Future Merge In The Present.

Any Town That Doesn't Have Sidewalks Doesn't Love Its Children.

Many Women, Particularly Young Women, Have Claimed The Right To Use The Most Explicit Sex Terms, Including Extremely Vulgar Ones, In Public As Well As Private. But It Is Men, Far More Than Women, Who Have Been Liberated By This Change. For Now That Women Use These Terms, Men No Longer Need To Watch Their Own Language In The Presence Of Women. But Is This A Gain For Women?

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.

Living In The Modern World, Clothed And Muffled, Forced To Convey Our Sense Of Our Bodies In Terms Of Remote Symbols Like Walking Sticks And Umbrellas And Handbags, It Is Easy To Lose Sight Of The Immediacy Of The Human Body Plan.

One Of The Oldest Human Needs Is Having Someone To Wonder Where You Are When You Don't Come Home At Night.

An Occupation That Has No Basis In Sex-determined Gifts Can Now Recruit Its Ranks From Twice As Many Potential Artists.

We Must Have...a Place Where Children Can Have A Whole Group Of Adults They Can Trust.

It Is Easier To Change A Man's Religion Than To Change His Diet.

For Art To Be Reality, The Whole Sensuous Being Must Be Caught Up In The Experience.

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.

Impossible Situations

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Emmeline Pankhurst

Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

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