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

Margaret Mead

It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
MARGARET MEAD

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

Experience Leisure Reflection Time
My grandmother wanted me to get a good education, so she kept me as far away from schools as possible.
MARGARET MEAD

Education Goodness Myself Possible School
Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.
MARGARET MEAD

Accident Biology Father Necessary Social
Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man
MARGARET MEAD

Creature Emotional Expression Grief Humor Intellectual Laughter Loyalty Man
The ability to learn is older as it is also more widespread than is the ability to teach.
MARGARET MEAD

Ability Learning Old Teaching
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Activity Crisis Development Discussion Exception Interest Mature Representation Stress
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Freedom Future Open Past People Support System Traditional Unknown
We must have a place where children can have a whole group of adults they can trust.
MARGARET MEAD

Adult Children Place Trust
Throughout history, females have picked providers for males. Males pick anything.
MARGARET MEAD

Choice Female History Male
The people of one nation alone cannot save their own children; each holds the responsibility for the others’ children.
MARGARET MEAD

Alone Children Nation People Responsibility Save
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Care Earth Moon Ourselves Photograph Planet Realize
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Count Divorce Encouragement Knowledge Marriage People
[Partly as a consequence of male authority] prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.
MARGARET MEAD

Activity Attachment Man Prestige Value
Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them.
MARGARET MEAD

Afraid Along Man Woman
Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world.
MARGARET MEAD

Ability Change Commitment Group Inspirational Small World
Don’t depend on governments or corporations to fix problems. Social revolutions are led by passionate individuals and that’s what makes the difference.
MARGARET MEAD

Corporation Difference Government Passionate Problem
Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.
MARGARET MEAD

Believe Care Change People Power
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Ability Creation Daydream Effort Equality Experience Man Reward
Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.
MARGARET MEAD

Liberty Man Philosophy Time Woman
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Attention Carry Children Community Husband Lover Need Romantic Time Willing World
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Assume Damage Different Important Man Oneself Woman
You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don’t like.
MARGARET MEAD

Relationship Smell Yourself
Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.
MARGARET MEAD

Goodness Grace Group Live Pleasant Small
To demand that another love what one loves is tyranny enough, but to demand that another hate what one hates, is even worse.
MARGARET MEAD

Demand Enough Hate Love Worst
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Believe Character Fix Tolerance Wrong
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.
MARGARET MEAD

Classification Existence Perish Potential Race Recognition Sex

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

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

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