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

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

Understanding the Quote: "contentment can be bought at a price that one can not possibly..."

This quote by Margaret Mead reflects deeply on the theme of contentment. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Contentment, Pay, Can Not, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Margaret Mead interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead is celebrated for insightful thoughts on contentment and pay. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Contentment
Pay
Can Not
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My Grandmother Wanted Me To Get A Good Education, So She Kept Me As Far Away From Schools As Possible.
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If A Fish Were An Anthropologist, The Last Thing It Would Discover Would Be Water.
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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.
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As Far Back As Our Knowledge Takes Us, Human Beings Have Lived In Families. We Know Of No Period When This Was Not So. We Know Of No People Who Have Succeeded For Long In Dissolving The Family Or Displacing It.
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‎ When A Person Is Born We Rejoice, And When They're Married We Jubilate, But When They Die We Try To Pretend Nothing Has Happened.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You "have A Date," You "go Out With A Date," You "groan Because There Isn't A Decent Date In Town." A Situation Defined As Containing A Girl - Or Boy - Of The Right Social Background, The Right Degree Of Popularity, A Little Higher Than Your Own.
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Creationism: The Theory That Rome Was Built In A Day.
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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.
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In Our Contemporary World, No One Can Think Or Work With A Single Picture Of What A Family Is. No One Can Fit All Human Behavior, All Thought And Feeling, Into A Single Pattern.
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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.
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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.
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Always Remember That You Are Absolutely Unique. Just Like Everyone Else.
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We Won't Have A Society If We Destroy The Environment.
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I Must Admit That I Personally Measure Success In Terms Of The Contributions An Individual Makes To Her Or His Fellow Human Beings.
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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.
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I Was Wise Enough To Never Grow Up While Fooling Most People Into Believing I Had.
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Every Time We Liberate A Woman, We Liberate A Man.
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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.
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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.
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Order
Differences
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Doe
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The Samoan Puts The Burden Of Amatory Success Upon The Man And Believes That Women Need More Initiating, More Time For Maturing Of Sexual Feeling. A Man Who Fails To Satisfy A Woman Is Looked Upon As A Clumsy, Inept Blunderer.
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Feelings
There Is No More Creative Force In The World Than The Menopausal Woman With Zest.
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Creative
World
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.
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Children
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.
Suffering
Identity
Culture
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.
Order
Two
Promise
Don't Depend On Governments Or Corporations To Fix Problems. Social Revolutions Are Led By Passionate Individuals And That's What Makes The Difference.
Government
Differences
Passionate
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.
Freedom
Passion
Government
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.
Women
Palaces
Slave
Instead Of Needing Lots Of Children, We Need High-quality Children.
Children
Quality
Needs
[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.
Long Ago
Movement
Body
In All Cultures, Human Beings - In Order To Be Human - Must Understand The Nonhuman.
Order
Culture
Humans
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.
Children
Parent
Mentor
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.
Sex
Children
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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
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I Learned The Value Of Hard Work By Working Hard.
Uplifting
Determination
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Sooner Or Later I'm Going To Die, But I'm Not Going To Retire.
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Retiring
Sooner Or Later
I Think Rigid Heterosexuality Is A Perversion Of Nature.
Thinking
Heterosexuality Is
Heterosexuality
What The World Needs Is Not Romantic Lovers Who Are Sufficient Unto Themselves, But Husbands And Wives Who Live In Communities, Relate To Other People, Carry On Useful Work And Willingly Give Time And Attention To Their Children.
Husband
Children
Romantic Love
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.
Reflection
Ideas
Political
[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'.
Mother
Children
Father
Dancing Is The Only Activity In Which Almost All Ages And Both Sexes Participate.
Sex
Dancing
Age
Chief Among Our Gains Must Be Reckoned This Possibility Of Choice, The Recognition Of Many Possible Ways Of Life, Where Other Civilizations Have Recognized Only One. Where Other Civilizations Give A Satisfactory Outlet To Only One Temperamental Type, Be He Mystic Or Soldier, Business Man Or Artist, A Civilization In Which There Are Many Standards Offers A Possibility Of Satisfactory Adjustment To Individuals Of Many Different Temperamental Types, Of Diverse Gifts And Varying Interests.
Business
Men
Artist
I Have Spent Most Of My Life Studying The Lives Of Other Peoples - Faraway Peoples - So That Americans Might Better Understand Themselves.
Might
Study
Lives Of Others
Learned Behaviors Have Replaced The Biologically Given Ones.
Behavior
Given
Learned Behavior
The Problem With America Today Is That Too Many People Know Too Much About Not Enough.
Success
America
People
Monogamous Heterosexual Love Is Probably One Of The Most Difficult, Complex And Demanding Of Human Relationships.
Love Is
Sexuality
Monogamy
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.
Running
Views
Groups
The Time Has Come, I Think, When We Must Recognize Bisexuality As A Normal Form Of Human Behavior.
Thinking
Normal
Behavior
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.
Thinking
People
Political
Cynicism Is The Other Thing That Goes With Sentimentality.
Cynicism
Sentimentality
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.
Strong
Loss
Space
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.
Girl
Children
Caring
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.
Children
Sleep
Independent
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.
Sight
Walking Sticks
Handbags
Female Animals Defending Their Young Are Notoriously Ferocious And Lack The Playful Delight In Combat Which Characterizes The Mock Combats Of Males Of The Same Species. There Seems Very Little Ground For Claiming That The Mother Of Young Children Is More Peaceful, More Responsible, And More Thoughtful For The Welfare Of The Human Race Than Is Her Husband Or Brother.
Mother
Brother
Husband
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.
Science
Air
Listening
For The Very First Time The Young Are Seeing History Being Made Before It Is Censored By Their Elders.
Media
History
Being Sad
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.
Past
Opportunity
Equality
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.
Mother
Children
Growing Up
There Are Now No Elders Who Know More Than The Young Themselves About What The Young Are Experiencing.
Generations
Young
Elders
Men Have Always Been Afraid That Women Could Get Along Without Them.
Men
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.
Daughter
Sex
Couple
The Closest Friends I Made All Through Life Have Been People Who Also Grew Up Close To A Loved And Loving Grandmother Or Grandfather.
Grandmother
People
Grandparent
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.
Country
Next Week
Cities
Laughter, That Distinctively Human Emotion, Laughter Which Springs From Trust In The Other, From Willingness To Put Oneself Momentarily In The Other's Place, Even At One's Own Expense, Is The Special Emotional Basis Of Democratic Procedures, Just As Pride Is The Emotion Of An Aristocracy, Shame Of A Crowd That Rules, And Fear Of A Police State.
Laughter
Spring
Pride
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.
Men
House
Important
Human Nature Is Potentially Aggressive And Destructive And Potentially Orderly And Constructive.
Human Nature
Aggressive
Aggression
The Most Extraordinary Thing About A Really Good Teacher Is That He Or She Transcends Accepted Educational Methods. Such Methods Are Designed To Help Average Teachers Approximate The Performance Of Good Teachers.
Education
Teacher
Teaching
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.
Men
Important
Different
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.
Witty
Growing Up
Tired
The Way To Do Fieldwork Is Never To Come Up For Air Until It Is All Over.
Air
Way
Metamorphosis
A Society Which Is Clamouring For Choice, Which Is Filled With Many Articulate Groups, Each Urging Its Own Brand Of Salvation, Its Own Variety Of Economic Philosophy, Will Give Each New Generation No Peace Until All Have Chosen Or Gone Under, Unable To Bear The Conditions Of Choice.
Philosophy
Giving
Choices
Life In The Twentieth Century Is Like A Parachute Jump: You Have To Get It Right The First Time.
Life
Jumping
Firsts
The United States Has The Power To Destroy The World, But Not The Power To Save It Alone
United States
World
States
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.
Women
Long
Training
Envy Of The Male Role Can Come As Much From An Undervaluation Of The Role Of Wife And Mother As From An Overvaluation Of The Public Aspects Of Achievement That Have Been Reserved For Men.
Mother
Men
Envy
We Have Nowhere Else To Go... This Is All We Have.
Earth
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?
Sex
Women
Watches
In Each Age There Is A Series Of Pressing Questions Which Must Be Asked And Answered. On The Correctness Of The Questions Depends The Survival Of Those Who Ask; On The Quality Of The Answers Depends The Quality Of The Life Those Survivors Will Lead.
Survival
Age
Quality
Never Doubt That A Small Group Of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens Can Change The World; Indeed, It's The Only Thing That Ever Has.
Inspirational
Life
Friendship
Keeping Even The Most Humble Talent Wrapped In A Napkin Becomes The More Reprehensible The Greater The Emergency.
Humble
Emergencies
Napkins
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
Children
Growing Up
Life Changing
Leisure And The Cultivation Of Human Capacities Are Inextricably Interdependent.
Leisure
Capacity
Cultivation
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.
Civilization
Evil
Way
Women Have An Important Contribution To Make.
Important
Contribution
Important Contributions
All Of Us Who Grew Up Before World War Ii Are Immigrants In Time, Immigrants From An Earlier World, Living In An Age Essentially Different From Anything We Knew Before.
War
Age
Different
We — Mankind — Stand At The Center Of An Evolutionary Crisis, With A New Evolutionary Device — Our Consciousness Of The Crisis — As Our Unique Contribution.
Unique
Consciousness
Crisis
Sister Is Probably The Most Competitive Relationship Within The Family, But Once The Sisters Are Grown, It Becomes The Strongest Relationship.
Relationship
Family
Sister
For The Human Species To Evolve, The Conversation Must Deepen.
Conversation
Evolve
Humans
Anthropology... Has Always Been Highly Dependent Upon Photography... As The Use Of Still Photography - And Moving Pictures - Has Become Increasingly Essential As A Part Of Anthropological Methods, The Need For Photographers With A Disciplined Knowledge Of Anthropology And For Anthropologists With Training In Photography Has Increased. We Expect That In The Near Future Sophisticated Training In Photography Will Be A Requirement For All Anthropologists. (1962)
Photography
Moving
Training
If Sports Are The Toy Department Of Life, Then The Nfl Is The Fao Schwartz Of Sports.
Sports
Nfl
Toys
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.
Sex
Thinking
Capacity To Love
To Demand That Another Love What One Loves Is Tyranny Enough, But To Demand That Another Hate What One Hates, Is Even Worse.
Hate
Love Is
Demand
The Ability To Learn Is Older As It Is Also More Widespread Than Is The Ability To Teach.
Teaching
Learning
Teach
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.
Sex
Differences
Two
It Is Of Very Doubtful Value To Enlist The Gifts Of A Woman Into Fields That Have Been Defined As Male; It Frightens The Men, Unsexes The Women, And Muffles And Distorts The Contribution Women Could Make.
Men
Males
Fields
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.
Friends
Beautiful
Clever
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.
Children
Believe
Character
Be Who You Really Are, Do What You Want To Do, In Order To Have What You Really Want.
Order
Want
What You Want
No Society That Feeds Its Children On Tales Of Successful Violence Can Expect Them Not To Believe That Violence In The End Is Rewarded.
Children
Believe
Successful
Most People Prefer To Carry Out The Kinds Of Experiments That Allow The Scientist To Feel That He Is In Full Control Of The Situation Rather Than Surrendering Himself To The Situation, As One Must In Studying Human Beings As They Actually Live.
Science
People
Study
Mothers Are A Biological Necessity; Fathers Are A Social Invention
Mother
Father
Women
Every Act Of Motherhood Contains A Dual Intent, As The Mother Holds The Child Close And Prepares It To Move Way From Her, As She Supports The Child And Stands It Firmly On Its Own Feet, And As She Guards It Against Danger And Sends It Out Across The Yard, Down By The Stream, And Across The Traffic-crowded Highway. Unless A Mother Can Do Both - Gather Her Child Close And Turn Her Child Out Toward The World - She Will Fail In Her Purpose.
Mother
Children
Moving
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