Margaret Mead War Quotations

War is only an invention, not a biological necessity.

WE MUST DEVISE A SYSTEM IN WHICH PEACE IS MORE REWARDING THAN WAR.

Ninety-nine percent of the time humans have lived on this planet we've lived in tribes, groups of 12 to 36 people. Only during times of war, or what we have now, which is the psychological equivalent of war, does the nuclear family prevail, because it's the most mobile unit that can ensure the survival of the species. But for the full flowering of the human spirit we need groups, tribes.

Warfare ... is just an invention, older and more widespread than the jury system, but none the less an invention.

today's children are the first generation to grow up in a world that has the power to destroy itself.

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.

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.

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.