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

— Margaret Mead

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?

— Margaret Mead

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

— Margaret Mead

Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover's insecurity.

— Margaret Mead

Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.

— Margaret Mead

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.

— Margaret Mead

Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

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.

— Margaret Mead