“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.”
“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
“Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.”
“We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.”
“Sister is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship.”
“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.”
“It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.”
“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.”
“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”
“For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.”
“Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.”
“One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.”
“I learned the value of hard work by working hard.”
“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.”
“Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.”
“Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.”
“I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.”
“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.”
“I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.”
“Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.”
“Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.”
“I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.”
“Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.”