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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.

-Margaret Mead

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I Approached The Idea

Margaret Mead

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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.

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More From Margaret Mead

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.

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.

I Think Rigid Heterosexuality Is A Perversion Of Nature.

Heterosexuality Is

Heterosexuality

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.

We Need Every Human Gift And Cannot Afford To Neglect Any Gift Because Of Artificial Barriers Of Sex Or Race Or Class Or National Origin.

Earth Day Is The First Holy Day...and Is Devoted To The Harmony Of Nature... The Celebration Offends No Historical Calendar, Yet It Transcends Them All.

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.

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

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

Children Must Be Taught How To Think, Not What To Think.

Parents Feel Like Immigrants In The Country Of The Young.

All Social Change Comes From The Passion Of Individuals.

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.

Jealousy Is Not A Barometer By Which The Depth Of Love Can Be Read. It Merely Records The Degree Of The Lover's Insecurity.

For The Human Species To Evolve, The Conversation Must Deepen.

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.

Children Not Only Have To Learn What Their Parents Learned In School, But Also Have To Learn How To Learn. This Has To Be Recognized As A New Problem Which Is Only Partly Solved.

The Task Of Each Family Is Also The Task Of All Humanity. This Is To Cherish The Living, Remember Those Who Have Gone Before, And Prepare For Those Who Are Not Yet Born.

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.

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

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.

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.

Learned Behaviors Have Replaced The Biologically Given Ones.

Learned Behavior

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.

As The Traveler Who Has Once Been From Home Is Wiser Than He Who Has Never Left His Own Doorstep, So A Knowledge Of One Other Culture Should Sharpen Our Ability To Scrutinize More Steadily, To Appreciate More Lovingly, Our Own.

I Learned The Value Of Hard Work By Working Hard.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[partly As A Consequence Of Male Authority] Prestige Value Always Attaches To The Activities Of Men.

Fathers Are Biological Necessities, But Social Accidents.

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.

Even Though The Ship May Go Down, The Journey Goes On.

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

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

I Think The Important Thing About Sisters Is That They Share The Same Minute, Familiar Life-style, The Same Little Sets Of Rules. Therefore They Can Keep House With Each Other Late In Life, Because They Share The Same Bunch Of Housewifely Prejudices. The Important Thing About Women Today Is, As They Get Older, They Still Keep House. It's One Reason They Don't Die, But Men Die When They Retire. Women Just Polish The Teacups.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Sister Is Probably The Most Competitive Relationship Within The Family, But Once The Sisters Are Grown, It Becomes The Strongest Relationship.

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

Never Underestimate That A Small Group Of People Can Hold Up A Liquor License. Sometimes, It's The Only Thing That Can.

A Small Group Of Thoughtful People Could Change The World.

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.

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 Do Not Believe In Using Women In Combat, Because Females Are Too Fierce.

Women Have An Important Contribution To Make.

Important Contributions

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.

Leisure And The Cultivation Of Human Capacities Are Inextricably Interdependent.

...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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Home, I Learned, Can Be Anywhere You Make It. Home Is Also The Place To Which You Come Back Again And Again.

Again And Again

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

No Society Has Ever Yet Been Able To Handle The Temptations Of Technology To Mastery, To Waste, To Exuberance, To Exploration And Exploitation... We Have To Learn To Cherish This Earth And Cherish It As Something That's Fragile, That's Only One, It's All We Have... We Have To Use Our Scientific Knowledge To Correct The Dangers That Have Come From Science And Technology.

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

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

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

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.

The City As A Center Where, Any Day In Any Year, There May Be A Fresh Encounter With A New Talent, A Keen Mind Or A Gifted Specialist-this Is Essential To The Life Of A Country. To Play This Role In Our Lives A City Must Have A Soul-a University, A Great Art Or Music School, A Cathedral Or A Great Mosque Or Temple, A Great Laboratory Or Scientific Center, As Well As The Libraries And Museums And Galleries That Bring Past And Present Together. A City Must Be A Place Where Groups Of Women And Men Are Seeking And Developing The Highest Things They Know.

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.

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?

Never Underestimate The Ability Of A Small Group Of Committed Individuals To Change The World.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Young, Free To Act On Their Initiative, Can Lead Their Elders In The Direction Of The Unknown... The Children, The Young, Must Ask The Questions That We Would Never Think To Ask, But Enough Trust Must Be Re-established So That The Elders Will Be Permitted To Work With Them On The Answers.

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

There Is No Hierarchy Of Values By Which One Culture Has The Right To Insist On All Its Own Values And Deny Those Of Another.

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 Problem With America Today Is That Too Many People Know Too Much About Not Enough.

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

Congratulations

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.

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 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.

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

We Won't Have A Society If We Destroy The Environment.

Earth Day Uses One Of Humanity's Great Discoveries, The Discovery Of Anniversaries By Which, Throughout Time, Human Beings Have Kept Their Sorrows And Their Joys, Their Victories, Their Revelations And Their Obligations Alive, For Re-celebration And Re-dedication Another Year, Another Decade, Another Century, Another Eon.

The People Of One Nation Alone Cannot Save Their Own Children; Each Holds The Responsibility For The Others' Children.

The Negative Cautions Of Science Are Never Popular.

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.

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

A City Must Be A Place Where Groups Of Women And Men Are Seeking And Developing The Highest Things They Know.

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

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.

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

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.

When Human Beings Have Been Fascinated By The Contemplation Of Their Own Hearts, The More Intricate Biological Pattern Of The Female Has Become A Model For The Artist, The Mystic, And The Saint. When Mankind Turns Instead To What Can Be Done, Altered, Built, Invented, In The Outer World, All Natural Properties Of Men, Animals, Or Metals Become Handicaps To Be Altered Rather Than Clues To Be Followed.

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.

Man's Most Human Characteristic Is Not His Ability To Learn, Which He Shares With Many Other Species, But His Ability To Teach And Store What Others Have Developed And Taught Him.

When I Stand On A Street In A Canadian City And Look Across The Street, It Couldn't Be Anywhere But Canada, But How Can I Prove It?

Cynicism Is The Other Thing That Goes With Sentimentality.

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.

I Discovered When I Had A Child Of My Own That I Had Become A Biased Observer Of Small Children. Instead Of Looking At Them With Affectionate But Nonpartisan Eyes, I Saw Each Of Them As Older Or Younger, Bigger Or Smaller, More Or Less Graceful, Intelligent, Or Skilled Than My Own Child.

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

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

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

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.

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

[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'.

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

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

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.

There Are Unidentified Flying Objects. That Is, There Are A Hard Core Of Cases-perhaps 20 To 30 Percent In Different Studies-for Which There Is No Explanation. We Can Only Imagine What Purpose Lies Behind The Activities Of These Quiet, Harmlessly Cruising Objects That Time And Again Approach The Earth. The Most Likely Explanation, It Seems To Me, Is That They Are Simply Watching What We Are Up To

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

You Know You Love Someone When You Cannot Put Into Words How They Make You Feel.

Mothers Are A Biological Necessity; Fathers Are A Social Invention

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

The Solution To Adult Problems Tomorrow Depends On Large Measure Upon How Our Children Grow Up Today.

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

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.

You Can Never Have A Relationship With Someone Whose Smell You Don't Like.

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.

Throughout History, Females Have Picked Providers For Males. Males Pick Anything.

We Know Of No Culture That Has Said, Articulately, That There Is No Difference Between Men And Women Except In The Way They Contribute To The Creation Of The Next Generation.

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.

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

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

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.

Women Want Mediocre Men, And Men Are Working To Be As Mediocre As Possible.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

The Capacity For Friendship Usually Goes With Highly Developed Civilizations. The Ability To Cultivate People Differs By Culture And Class; But On The Whole, Educated People Have More Ways To Make Friends... . In England, For Instance, You Find Everyone In Your Class Has Read The Same Books. Here, People Grope For Something In Common-like A Newly Engaged Girl Who Came To Me And Said, "it's Absolutely Wonderful! His Uncle And My Cousin Were On The Same Football Team.

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.

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.

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.

And When Our Baby Stirs And Struggles To Be Born It Compels Humility: What We Began Is Now Its Own.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Britons Put Up With, Americans Fix, Canadians Cope

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

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

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.

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.

... Some Veil Between Childhood And The Present Is Necessary. If The Veil Is Withdrawn, The Artistic Imagination Sickens And Dies, The Prophet Looks In The Mirror With A Disillusioned And Cynical Sneer, The Scientist Goes Fishing.

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.

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

I Had No Reason To Doubt That Brains Were Suitable For A Woman.

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

Always Remember That You Are Absolutely Unique. Just Like Everyone Else.

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.

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

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

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.

The Mind Is Not Sex-typed.

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

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Jonathan Kellerman

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