A great deal of what I say just leaves me open, I suppose, to a vast amount of misunderstanding. A great deal of what I say is based on an assumption which I hold and don’t always state. You know my fury about people is based precisely on the fact that I consider them to be responsible, moral creatures who so often do not act that way. But I am not surprised when they do. I am not that wretched a pessimist, and I wouldn’t sound the way I sound if I did not expect what I expect from human beings, if I didn’t have some ultimate faith and love, faith in them and love for them. You see, I am a human being too, and I have no right to stand in judgment of the world as though I am not a part of it. What I am demanding of other people is what I am demanding of myself.'- James Baldwin

— Margaret Mead

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

— Margaret Mead

Anthropology demands 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.

— Margaret Mead

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

— Margaret Mead

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

— Margaret Mead

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

— Margaret Mead

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.

— Margaret Mead

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

— Margaret Mead

For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.

— Margaret Mead

Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very old human need.

— Margaret Mead