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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?

-Margaret Mead

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Many Women, Particularly Young

Margaret Mead

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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?

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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.

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

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

We Must Bear In Mind The Possibility That The Greater Opportunities Open In The Twentieth Century To Women May Be Quite Withdrawn, And That We May Return To Stricter Regimentation Of Women.

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.

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

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.

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

Sooner Or Later

If A Fish Were An Anthropologist, The Last Thing It Would Discover Would Be Water.

Parents Feel Like Immigrants In The Country Of The Young.

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.

Because Our Civilization Is Woven Of So Many Diverse Strands, The Ideas Which Any One Group Accepts Will Be Found To Contain Numerous Contradictions.

Britons Put Up With, Americans Fix, Canadians Cope

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

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.

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

... 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I Don't Consider My Marriages As Failures! It's Idiotic To Assume That Because A Marriage Ends, It's Failed.

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.

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

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.

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

Men Have Always Been Afraid That Women Could Get Along Without Them.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Mothers Are A Biological Necessity; Fathers Are A Social Invention

The Pains Of Childbirth Were Altogether Different From The Enveloping Effects Of Other Kinds Of Pain. These Were Pains One Could Follow With One's Mind.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life In The Twentieth Century Is Like A Parachute Jump: You Have To Get It Right The First Time.

The Assumption That Men Were Created Equal, With An Equal Ability To Make An Effort And Win An Earthly Reward, Although Denied Every Day By Experience, Is Maintained Every Day By Our Folklore And Our Daydreams.

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.

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

Congratulations

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

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.

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

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

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

Everyone Needs To Have Access Both To Grandparents And Grandchildren In Order To Be A Full Human Being.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Human Nature Is Almost Unbelievably Malleable, Responding Accurately And Contrastingly To Contrasting Cultural Conditions.

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.

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

A Small Group Of Thoughtful People Could Change The World.

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?

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

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.

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

Just As The Difference In Height Between Males Is No Longer A Realistic Issue, Now That Lawsuits Have Been Substituted For Hand-to-hand Encounters, So The Difference In Strength Between Men And Women Is No Longer Worth Elaboration In Cultural Institutions.

I Learned The Value Of Hard Work By Working Hard.

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

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.

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.

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

Prayer Does Not Use Up Artificial Energy, Doesn't Burn Up Any Fossil Fuel, Doesn't Pollute. Neither Does Song, Neither Does Love, Neither Does The Dance.

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.

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

Don't Depend On Governments Or Corporations To Fix Problems. Social Revolutions Are Led By Passionate Individuals And That's What Makes The Difference.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

It Is Not Until Science Has Become A Discipline To Which The Research Ability Of Any Mind From Any Class In Society Can Be Attracted That It Can Become Rigorously Scientific.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Leisure And The Cultivation Of Human Capacities Are Inextricably Interdependent.

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.

Fathers Are Biological Necessities, But Social Accidents.

My Grandmother Wanted Me To Get A Good Education, So She Kept Me As Far Away From Schools As Possible.

Manners, Really Good Ones, Make It Possible To Live With Almost Anyone, Gracefully And Pleasantly.

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

The Negative Cautions Of Science Are Never Popular.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Cynicism Is The Other Thing That Goes With Sentimentality.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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?

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Having Two Bathrooms Ruined The Capacity To Co-operate.

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.

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

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.

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

Monogamous Heterosexual Love Is Probably One Of The Most Difficult, Complex And Demanding Of Human Relationships.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I Think Rigid Heterosexuality Is A Perversion Of Nature.

Heterosexuality Is

Heterosexuality

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

American Society Is Very Like A Fish Society. . . . Among Certain Species Of Fish, The Only Thing Which Determines Order Of Dominance Is Length Of Time In The Fishbowl. The Oldest Resident Picks On The Newest Resident, And If The Newest Resident Is Removed To A New Bowl, He, As Oldest Resident, Will Pick On The Newcomers.

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.

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.

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

All Social Change Comes From The Passion Of Individuals.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I've Been Married Three Times - And Each Time I Married The Right Person.

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.

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.

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

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